


Unwitting Heroes

by AsWeAreNow



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Animal Abuse, Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Child Neglect, Gen, Potentially triggering for physical abuse survivors, Self Harm, csa?, emotional/verbal abuse, potentially triggering relationships with the body and food, suicide attempt/thoughts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-12 22:00:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 29,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28642605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AsWeAreNow/pseuds/AsWeAreNow
Summary: Unlike seemingly every outsider that moves to New York City, Alfred doesn’t want to build a legacy. Actually, he has very good reasons not to. Unfortunately, he’s a superhuman that always finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. Through this combination he becomes New York City’s very own superhero, even if all he wants is to be treated as human.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10





	1. Dark is the Night, Cold is the Ground

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First appeared on 9 December, 2020, on FFN. Crossposted from my account of the same name. Will be updated on both sites every weekend.
> 
> I should note here that the text will differ slightly; I have little access to a computer, which is the only way that I can update on FFN. As a result, the AO3 work will probably be a bit more polished, with somewhat less errors— at least, it will have less errors initially, until I can log on for more than an hour or two and fix the errors on FFN.

Chapter One: Dark is the Night, Cold is the Ground 

_I decided I was going to leave_

Nope. That just didn't sound right.

_I knew I was going to leave_

That was too simplistic. Was this not a life that Alfred was trying to discuss?

_On the last day of winter break in my freshman year, while cleaning up cat piss, I determined that I could not possibly stay._

_Piss?_ That was already too vulgar; Alfred was not a vulgar man.

_It was the last day of winter break during my freshman year of high school. I was sitting at the top of the stairs, mopping up cat pee_

_Pee?_ Was Alfred ten?

_...urine_

Alfred resumed his writing, peeved but unable to figure out what exactly was wrong. He put his pencil back against the paper, thought about what to write next. Two sentences done. A million more until he realized he was mediocre, right?

But alas, his motivation was gone. Perhaps it hadn't been there to start. He would stop for the night, but the least he could do was write the date: October 21, 2023.

—————————————————————————— 

Alfred was still puzzling over his writing when he found himself at a laundromat. It had been a long morning of unadulterated despair, but now he was at the laundromat... and he didn't know how to do laundry. Hell, he'd only found the laundromat today.

Alfred should have known he was defeated as soon as he realized he was unaware of how to do laundry, but he was a determined man. He found an article on how to do it, read it... and it didn't make sense to him. Whenever things didn't make sense to Alfred, a sense of complete, utter failure and general doom overtook him; really, what was Alfred to do except start crying in the laundromat?

He covered his face, still attempting to keep the sort of dignity one loses as soon as they find themselves crying in a laundromat, and continued to cry. He kept his laundry bag between his feet so that he could cover his face without fear of his laundry being stolen.

For God's sake, he didn't even have that many items to wash!

Even as Alfred cried, he couldn't help feeling very ashamed of himself. This is the sort of thing one can expect when they start crying in a laundromat, but crying in a laundromat wasn't something Alfred would do regularly... normally. Alfred could only speculate what he would do under normal circumstances.

Alfred stopped crying; he'd had an idea. He could simply _ask_ the man at the counter! Why did he always cry before finding simple solutions?- either way, it didn't matter now; he'd found a solution.

Alfred went to ask the man behind the counter if he could please give some general information about laundry machines, but then he felt stupid. A twenty-one year old in NYC, unable to do laundry. Alfred felt the need to defend himself; it swelled inside him, directly mirroring shame. And soon the man had heard about his cat, and how he couldn't ever go back to his home state because there was nowhere to go, how cold the nights had been; generally, the man heard Alfred's entire story.

"Shit, man. You should get therapy."

"I can't afford therapy!" Alfred's voice was ungodly; it cracked with emotion, only drawing more attention to himself.

"Excuse me," a man mumbled, tapping Alfred's shoulder. Alfred jumped, got embarrassed about that, and sheepishly turned to face his perceived assailant. "You don't seem quite alright. Why are you crying?"

"I c-can't do laundry," Alfred managed. He was not having a hard time breathing; on the contrary, his mind and body were just as disconnected as always. While Alfred was in a state of extreme emotional distress, physically he was 'quite alright'. "I can't fucking read," Alfred elaborated; he winced, as he was not a vulgar man and these were irregular circumstances, but also because that was a completely useless elaboration.

The man nodded in mock understanding and prompted, "Is that all?"

"Y-Yeah." That was not all, and both of them knew that. Nobody has ever cried in a laundromat over something so trivial as not being able to do laundry while surrounded by laundry machines; almost always these people had deep-rooted issues that went unaddressed, seeing as they were in a laundromat.

"Well, I could teach you how to do your laundry," the man offered.

"Really?"

"Yes, of course."

The man guided Alfred through the process and sat with him while he waited. Alfred just stared ahead at the clothes, spinning and spinning and spinning- he wished he was a piece of fabric spinning in a laundry machine, or maybe blowing through a dirty alleyway. That would be better than now.

"What's your name, son?"

Alfred did not point out that the man was only two or three years older than him. This man had taught him how to do his laundry, after all; he was more useful to Alfred than Alfred's father had been. "Alfred. What's yours?"

"Arthur."

"Oh. Nice to meet you." Alfred was unsure of what else to say. What should one tell a man who has unwittingly saved their life, without even knowing their name? "Thanks."

"Yeah, no problem."

Alfred had the urge to dig his nails into his arm, something that would surely hurt terribly, but he could not do so in front of Arthur and the rest of the people at the laundromat. It would be too much mess.

And then it was done. It was all done; his clothes were dry and in the bag, and Alfred was leaving. Such mundane things, mundane but still numerous. Alfred would go home today and think only, 'I did the laundry.' That was okay. An entire life didn't need to be written.

Writing. That was what Alfred needed to think about.

The trouble, really, was that Alfred couldn't find a proper writing style- not to convey his life, anyway. Not a human life. He could write elegantly, describe the ennui from waking up everyday knowing things wouldn't improve. Alfred could describe the constantly plummeting nadir that he'd found himself in for much of his adolescence. How was it that every day back then had been the same, and yet he still had so much to say about it? How could Alfred explain the knowledge of ephemerality and how it could exist with the urge to die- how was it that life was short, and still seemingly too long?

That wasn't perfect; all it did was scream, _**I OWN A THESAURUS!**_ which wasn't true. Alfred did know these words and he knew them well; he'd lived through many entries. Even if Alfred's writing had been rich and articulate, it wouldn't have been accurate. Alfred's most detailed memories were nothing short of disturbing, and to make his writing pleasant or enjoyable would be tantamount to failure.

So Alfred would try to dial it down a bit, to take the bells and whistles away; perhaps things were better understood when vocabulary was limited. Alfred was an aspiring polyglot, so this was rather easy: pick a language, write in it, and translate it back to English. No matter what, Alfred would end up writing simply; he had never been able to commit to a language, and his vocabulary was only ever enough to read a children's book.

What came back to him was always elementary, something that read like a traumatized elementary student explaining their home life to a concerned teacher. Sure, what Alfred had gone through may have been horrific to an elementary student, but he hadn't been an elementary student when everything started; nobody had cared or stepped in.

Alfred had nowhere he needed to be that day, so he headed to his apartment much more slowly than usual. It was a hot day, and all Alfred could really think was that he hoped to get a heat stroke and die- something peaceful, or at least not violent, like that.

"Yo, man! Don't jump! You prolly have so much to live for!"

Someone else shouted, "Yeah!" Alfred instinctively looked up in time to see a man begin a steady plummet toward the Earth. The kids gathered around the base of the building scrambled out of the way.

Everything from there happened incredibly quickly, so much so that Alfred felt he'd blacked out for a few seconds. When he came to, a man was in the arms.

Alfred put him down and then realized, with something akin to terror, that it was quite possible that these punk ass children were recording. He picked up his laundry bag and started to run.

...

Alfred sprinted all the way home, laundry basket tripping him up several times. Blessed with seemingly superhuman strength, but endurance was a no-go; that about summed Alfred's luck up; perhaps it did justice to his life as well. Alfred wouldn't actually know if he had great endurance or not because he didn't eat anything healthy and he also hadn't worked out in a very long time; as it was, he was winded and in significant pain when he opened the door and fell into his apartment.

Alfred was on the news that evening. Kiku, his roommate, had turned it on just in time to hear what had happened. The man was okay; a few broken bones, but that was better than being mangled on the pavement. The man had been working at the bakery at the base of the building, and that day had decided to just keep climbing until he reached the roof. Alfred had never imagined working at a bakery to be stressful, but he could see it now that he lived in New York City. The man wasn't available for comment.

There was a video, but it came from a security camera across the street. Kiku calmly asked him, "Alfred, was that you that caught the man?"

"No."

"That looks like your laundry basket."

"It's not."

"Okay." Kiku didn't sound convinced, but he didn't pry, which Alfred was grateful for.

It would be reasonable to assume that Kiku felt no total malice for Alfred, the roommate he'd only known for the past three days. At the very least Kiku felt no malice for him at this moment. Alfred still thought the situation tense despite the fact that it clearly wasn't, so he carefully planned the rest of his day to avoid Kiku. That was really quite easy; all Alfred had left for the day was shower and go to sleep. In the morning things would be fine.

Alfred took a shower and tried not to think too much, but trying to sleep afterward was overwhelming. Alfred didn't have the money to spend on sleeping pills, but he did have something that would surely lull him to sleep: a pencil and paper.

Alfred reviewed all he'd written: the entire two sentences. He wasn't sure what to write next; for now he jotted down _I_ and stopped.

In high school, shortly after the incident, Alfred had lost the ability to comfortably write in the first person. This had happened by way of being forced to write several short stories; combined with the general disbelief Alfred had at his living situation, it was enough to force him out of the narrative entirely. Alfred had still kept a journal after the incident despite how dangerous it was to do so; he still kept it, but he had disappeared from the narrative. So had specific times, and days were only occasionally mentioned.

Before the incident Alfred had dedicated pages and pages to each day, meticulously documenting his life in an almost narcissistic manner. Immediately after the incident there were at most three or four pages per month, dates mentioned without the accompanying times, and recurring issues that became so recurrent that Alfred would stop writing about them entirely. Alfred had went from a full-on diary to occasional thoughts on the obscure.

As a result of all this, Alfred had lost the ability to write from his own point of view in a grammatically proper manner, as well as a fair chunk of everyday horrors from that time. He had, in a sense, lost himself. To combat the first point Alfred could have created a character to distance himself from his experiences entirely, but that would have taken the purpose of writing away. There was no getting the lost time back, and that was for the best.

_Writing isn't that hard_ , Alfred thought, frustrated. He still knew how to form sentences, and nothing else really mattered when one was just trying to get things onto a page. Alfred held the belief that, once things were written, they were no longer real. That was obviously incorrect, but at the very least Alfred found that things didn't plague him as much when he wrote them down. He could write of the incident a million times and it would still haunt him, so all he needed to do was write it down a million and one times.

Alfred wouldn't give up until he'd thoroughly banished his entire childhood from his life. So he continued: _That was the night I knew I was going to move to New York City._ That was well good and everything, but it made the first rather redundant.

After a bit of editing: _On the last night of winter break during my freshman year of high school, I mopped up cat urine while imagining a future in New York City: one where I belonged with eight million other people, one where no one could find me, one where I was alone._

That was a little too wordy, and it didn't explain why New York City guaranteed his safety. The average reader- not that he was planning on publishing this, but still- would likely think, "but private investigators!" or at least that was what Alfred was thinking as he read over it.

He tried again: _My parents always hated New York City- it was too dirty, the liberals ruined it, it was too dangerous, they would never step foot in it again if at all avoidable. While mopping up cat urine on a cold night in my freshman year of high school, I decided I was going to move to New York City precisely for this reason._

Alfred was a little more satisfied with this. It wasn't perfect; if he continued with this theme the story would read more like an ode to New York City than anything else. Alfred was alright with that; New York City was his protector, his savior. He was blanketed by eight million people and politics, and that was a protection unrivaled.

Alfred was a little more satisfied, but he was also very tired. He was afforded just enough contentment to go to sleep.

———————————————————————————

_You ugly, fat, stupid piece of shit._

What a beautiful thought to start the day off with. Alfred was used to belittling himself, and he was able to combat it easily; he just didn't buy enough food to be fat, he wasn't particularly ugly, and maybe he was a bit stupid if, as a writer, those were the best insults he could come up with.

Alfred didn't feel great, but it had nothing to do with thinking himself an ugly, fat, stupid piece of shit. Alfred just never felt great, and that was alright with him because it had to be.

He made his way to the kitchen and started brewing coffee, and then he just sat down and rested his head on the table. "Good morning, dude," he said, not bothering to look up when Kiku entered the kitchen.

Kiku jumped; Alfred imagined he wasn't used to having a roommate yet, much less one that woke up earlier than he did. Finally Kiku responded, "Good morning."

Alfred was pretty sure Kiku didn't like him very much. Kiku certainly didn't seem like the sort that would; Kiku was quiet and introverted, and Alfred was Alfred. Alfred spilled his problems to strangers in laundromats and listened to music for fear of silence. Clearly they were very different.

New York City saved him again by being incredibly unaffordable; Alfred was convinced he wouldn't have a chance in hell of Kiku ever wanting him as a roommate was rent not incredibly high.

He was on the news that morning as well, perhaps the second-most reported thing after last night's political mishap. Alfred hoped the man's attempt would be more of a regional event rather than something that garnered national attention. Thank God for that blasted politician.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know that one shouldn’t use too many tags, but I’m under the impression that they can serve as the TW. Is that right? I’m still new, so I don’t know, but all the tags have at least one relevant (or several tiny) scenes in the story, so please heed them and keep yourselves safe.
> 
> A comment would be great. Have an excellent day.


	2. Rice Crisps

Chapter Two: Rice Crisps

_With the right mindset, the O'Hare International Airport is the best airport in America._

_By all means, there is nothing great about it. The O'Hare International Airport is a disgusting waste of land, filled with endless constraints (and lack thereof, when needed) put in place specifically to hinder the paths of its travelers. If not this, many have wondered, surely the designers of this airport were dull or on various illegal substances?_

_One might call the airport Kafkaesque, but they would be wrong. Yes, the O'Hare International Airport is a perfect example of a vague, horrid system that may have helped someone at some point and now only exists as a nuisance. Yes, the O'Hare International Airport is always late with everything, gives terrible directions or no directions at all, and affects everyone to some degree. Yes, many weary innocents have gathered at the forsaken place and tried to use logic against a senseless, mindless system. The O'Hare International Airport could very well have inspired Kafka, had it been around and had travel been more common and accessible at the time._

_Even despite the disgusting designed dysfunction of this system, it cannot be afforded the honor 'Kafkaesque' would imply; it is true that the weary traveler may try to use logic to escape the O'Hare International Airport, but only to the degree they feel they should. A person might be sentenced by an extremely influential and secretive court and believe they have a fighting chance, or better yet that it's all a misunderstanding. The traveler is resigned to their fate._

_I have seen people collapse in the baggage claim of the Hell that is the O'Hare International Airport; I have seen couples call off their engagements, and still others get physically assaulted. It is always ugly, and sill not nearly as ugly as the airport itself. While the airport cannot be described as 'Kafkaesque,' it is similar to Kafka's writing in one particular way: one can find humor in it if only they look past the revolting inconvenience that is finding themselves in such an unfortunate situation. One needs only to embrace the absolute hopelessness of life in such a place. To enjoy one's surroundings, one must be_

One must be _what_? What did one have to be? Accepting of their situation? Cold, mirthless, unforgiving?

New York City was extraordinarily expensive, and Alfred was lucky to have a job he wanted; he wrote articles about history and old movies, things of that sort. It was a bit boring, but the pay was fine given that Alfred had an associate’s degree in political science and absolutely no other qualifications regarding anything whatsoever. The pay was good for someone with no real life experience. However, it still wasn’t enough, so Alfred wrote and submitted articles wherever he could, including this one. He would submit them to scamming publishers that offered $10-$30 an article; it didn't matter to Alfred because anything helped and he didn't think he could handle a full-on second job. Even despite this Alfred was still looking for something better, but for now this was the best he had.

Alfred would take a break for now, come back to it later. He had other things to do anyway.

"Hey, Kiku. Do you want me to get you anything from the grocery store?" Alfred asked, poking his head out of his room. Kiku was in the common area, quietly working on his computer. "No," Kiku replied. "Thanks for asking."

Alfred didn't respond; he figured a response wasn't necessary. As he left, he couldn't help wondering how he was supposed to get Kiku to like him if Kiku rejected all favors. Alfred's personality wasn't exactly a winner.

...

Alfred's parents had spent the majority of his memorable childhood telling him that he would never survive on his own. Alfred's mother had said he would never survive a day in her childhood; Alfred's father, that he hoped Alfred never moved out because he was sure to fall in with the wrong crowd or get robbed. "The world is dangerous," his parents would say, "and you are blind to it." Alfred was too naive, too pampered, too trusting, spoiled. A brat with no awareness about the real world.

Alfred kept this in mind as he walked. He'd never lived in a big city before; apparently life was more dangerous in large cities. Back in Illinois, his little town had gotten an influx of crime from Chicago. All the city people knew to be suspicious, but the town's residents knew no such thing, his father had explained to him once.

This crippling inability to live in a safe, aware manner had convinced Alfred that he had to kill himself. Alfred hadn't been strong enough to live, but he wasn't strong enough to die either. So he'd kept living, but every day he didn't try meth or get shot was a miracle.

...

Alfred collected his groceries: a bag of frozen vegetables, a loaf of bread, peanut butter, and jelly. This was all Alfred typically ate. For a long time Alfred had actually disliked sandwiches of any kind, as well as a wide range of other foods; he wasn't particularly picky, but at several points he'd had to live off one food for a couple days: PB&J sandwiches, ramen, that sort of thing. Other foods, like garlic bread, had eventually disgusted him because eating such things on an empty stomach was a recipe for feeling sick the rest of the day. Now it actually felt liberating to eat these things, but Alfred still only really ate sandwiches. It was only the lack of choice that had peeved him.

Eventually Alfred made it to the clearance section; there was a family-sized box of rice crisps; all these years and states later, the packaging still looked identical to the beaten-up box he'd relied on when he was a kid. Alfred grabbed the box and was about to inspect a box of clearance donuts when a man caught his attention by simply holding a gun.

Alfred was pretty sure one wasn't supposed to have a gun out of the holster, but he wasn't political anymore and decided to mind his own business. But then the man raised the gun. Alfred was pretty sure this was the point where one might stop minding their own business, if not for themselves than for others. Alfred was a selfish man, so the others in the store didn't matter; he just thought, _I guess I don't really want to die_ , and then decked the man in front of him.

A nearby family looked up, seemingly terrified, as if Alfred was the psycho with the gun. They had been perusing the Lunchables, thus exercising a lack of awareness for their surroundings.

"He had a gun," Alfred mumbled. The family fled.

Alfred didn't know what to do next, but he felt the most responsible thing to do was use his Superior Strength to protect everyone else: he kicked the gun closer to the clearance shelf and sat next to it, a few feet away from the man. Alfred really didn't know what he was supposed to do.

Several minutes later a gaggle of employees and two police officers were walking toward him. The police officers didn't really tell him anything except to put his hands up. Eventually he was allowed to leave, and he would go home without remembering exactly what happened.

"You bought rice crisps? You never buy rice crisps," Kiku informed Alfred.

"Yeah, but they were on clearance."

"It's not wise to buy things just because they're on clearance."

Alfred rolled his eyes and opened the bag of vegetables, poured some into a pot along with water, an then set the water to boil. "Well, funny story."

Kiku loved his stories, obviously.

Alfred continued, "When I was a kid I lived for about two weeks off a family-sized box of rice crisps, and some peanut butter."

"Why? Were you a picky eater, or-,"

"My parents weren't giving me more than a string cheese and a banana to take to school, and I didn't eat breakfast in the morning; there wasn't really much food at home and I hadn't gotten into baking yet, and I obviously don't know how to cook. But they did let me get a snack from Walmart whenever we went, provided that it was two dollars or less, and one time I found a box of rice crisps, so I just lived off it for two weeks, carried it in a little bag with me. I eventually started mixing it with peanut butter, and all the kids in my class would just shake their heads at me when they walked past."

"Alfred, that's... that's really awful."

Alfred frowned a bit. "Really? That's one of my better memories from that school year, and I forgot about it 'til today."

Kiku disapproved of this; he shook his head rather fervently and stated, firmly, "That's still awful, and I'm really sorry you had to go through that."

"Yeah. I guess so." Alfred focused on his box of rice crisps to avoid looking at Kiku, more than a bit embarrassed. "I guess so." He strained the vegetables and sat down with them. He didn't really want to eat; he wasn't hungry anymore. But he still had to treat himself like a human being: he'd been hungry just a moment ago, so he ate.

Alfred gave the rice crisps to a homeless family down the street later that day.

...

Alfred made the news that night, too. It had been a week since he saved the jumping man, so everybody had mostly forgotten about him.

The idea that the Walmart really needed security cameras to watch the clearance section struck Alfred as strange; who was going to steal from the clearance section? But then he realized that if kid-Alfred could have gotten away with stealing from stores, kid-Alfred definitely would have. That didn't make Alfred feel great, so he stopped thinking about it.

Alfred was growing a bit wary of being on the news more than he needed to be. Nobody knew it was him... yet. But some people back home, in particular his parents, could easily find out.

Alfred tried to shake that thought from his mind and instead decided to read the comments of the article, which was usually a bad idea. One commenter had been generous enough to say, _Dude's a hero for saving all those people. Who knows what would've happened otherwise?_

Alfred thought 'Hero' was entirely too kind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A comment would be hella lit. Have a good day and stay safe.


	3. Cockroaches

3\. Cockroaches

Alfred came home from one of his daily walks to hear Kiku shouting. As soon as the door opened, Kiku went to whisper-shouting, but Alfred could still hear him. Kiku sounded entirely desperate, as if he was negotiating with a serial killer over the status of his family. Alfred highly doubted this was the case, seeing as Kiku's family lived in Ithaca, but Alfred still considered going on another walk. Alfred probably couldn't help with whatever was troubling Kiku; besides, just hearing someone shout was enough to bring him to tears these days, even if it wasn't directed at him.

After fifteen minutes of standing in front of the door, Alfred called out, "Kiku, are you alright?"

Kiku promptly stepped out of his room, closing the door sharply. He looked devastated, to say the least. "No."

"What-," Alfred hesitated; was this really any of his business? "What's bothering you?"

Kiku began to talk quickly, in a completely unintelligible manner. Three minutes later, all Alfred had heard clearly was that there was a cockroach in Kiku's room. Alfred rolled up a few pieces of paper and moved into the war zone.

It was easy enough to find the cockroach, and in Kiku's defense, it was quite large. Almost unnaturally so.

Alfred whacked it with a piece of paper and hovered over its twitching body. It wasn't dying, so Alfred had a moral dilemma: did he kill it or did he release it? Was death better than a life of suffering? If Alfred dropped it straight out the window, would it just plummet to the ground and die anyway?

This lasted a good five minutes before Alfred whacked it again, scooped it up, and threw it in the trash.

Kiku thanked him rather abashedly. Alfred didn't believe such trivial fears were anything to be ashamed of, and after calmly claiming the moral high-ground over such a matter, he went to his room.

Occasionally Alfred remembered that he had a poor memory. Alfred would have liked to blame it on the trauma, but he genuinely couldn't remember if he'd always had a poor memory or if it had happened after everything else. He wasn't really sure if he had actually been through anything worth getting traumatized over or if he was really unnecessarily victimizing himself and making everything up. The two were nearly tantamount in that they signaled the other's occurrence, but they weren't quite the same.

———————————————————————————

Alfred had problems with short term memory, in particular with writing and just about everything else one might commit to short term memory. Alfred wasn't sure if he would struggle with long-term memories because everything horrible that had happened to him since he was twelve was documented. Either way, writing his story was made much more difficult; he would think of a continuation that wasn't strictly self-pity and would promptly forget it. Then he would think about how self pity was validation, how some sadnesses were unbearable and others were addicting, and then he would be writing about something else entirely.

Today was not a self-pity day, even though he'd forgotten the perfect continuation for his two sentences. What a devastating thing, to forget. What if Alfred was really this brilliant mind and every thought he didn't write down was another thought that wouldn't get published posthumously against his will, to be revered for generations?... this moment was a glorifying moment, a moment of idolization, but that wasn't the point of his writing. He thought, _Hey, I'll just force myself to relive the most traumatic memory I can bear to think of right now,_ which was of course The Incident. He'd get it out of the way and maybe he'd even rest easy for a while.

Alfred sometimes wrote as though he was purely exhausted, which he always was. So it was here: the sentences were halting, unembellished; he had vanished from the wording entirely; the handwriting was more slanted, fragile and yet not delicate.

The problem with writing about such a situation was that writing elegantly would betray the seriousness of it. How brief his thoughts had been, and yet how emotional. How unfathomable, and yet Alfred had kept moving throughout the entire event, indeed hadn't truly ceased moving since. To write at all would be a betrayal of the clear contradiction of the situation, of his reactions. To write in short sentences, to truly communicate how devastating the situation was to fourteen-year-old Alfred, would also betray him. As a kid, whenever Alfred was in trouble or in the act of getting Completely Traumatized, his mind would jettison into the countless details, already thinking of how he would capture this moment, how he would keep it. It was a sort of game, really, or perhaps more of a survival strategy.

Alfred wanted desperately to document his life, and yet it seemed every influential moment was a paradox. None of it fit together, but it obviously was supposed to somehow; he was alive. How did he capture contradiction when it surrounded him so thoroughly?

In other words, Alfred couldn't be satisfied with this page because it just wasn't good. It wasn't accurate at all.

...

There was absolutely nothing good about Alfred's memory, he lamented to himself, as he often did. Here he was, at the library, looking for an immensely popular book he'd been lusting over for the past few weeks... and he couldn't remember what he was looking for. He went through his 'Want-to-Read' shelf on Goodreads, but since he added new books everyday he couldn't find his temporary obsession.

It was truly amazing, how utterly and completely his memory failed him. Alfred supposed that it was reliable and in that way he ought to be grateful for it. Besides, he was at the library now. He could look for a different book to read.

Alfred couldn't find a single book he was interested in, despite being surrounded by books. He read a few pages through several, but nothing interested him. Instead he was plagued by the idea that he was condemned to remember everything he didn't want to, while forgetting things that helped him live and function, like eating and writing articles for his job. To think that one is absolutely doomed and will never regain a decent memory, sentenced to proving themselves idiotic and unreliable when they were in fact trying their best, would be enough to keep anyone from some light reading.

Alfred left the library shortly after without any books. He took a glance at his phone; like everyone else, he seemed glued to it. There was one message, which was more than usual. It was a message from his mother: _Alfred, you should come home for Christmas._

Alfred faltered, stopped completely, and only kept walking when someone told him to get fucked. The days were getting shorter and colder. Perhaps he did want to see his family, just a little. _Yeah, sure_ , he replied.

Little tot of strong morals and immense cowardice. No heroism for the day; just home.

———————————————————————————

When Alfred was still a minor, he'd typed all of his writing onto a Google Document in an act of nothing short of survival. As a result he no longer had physical copies, and it was much easier to transport. Sometimes Alfred read through little bits and pieces, but very rarely; they managed to bore and horrify him simultaneously.

Today was a 'sometimes' day. He read through a couple pages, but couldn't really take them seriously. His vocabulary had been limited, his goal much different, and overall his writing had... improved drastically over the years. Alfred didn't much like how much he swore in these journals, but he kept them because he was a bitter man.

Pages, hundreds of pages, plaintive and desperate and yet snobbish in the way that only the accused are. Entire books of someone desperately grasping dignity when it was long gone, mourning it the way one might mourn oneself.

The immense brokenness and fear that was Alfred's entire present personality simply didn't exist within portions of his past writing. Through the ages twelve to fourteen Alfred had held a sort of indignation, a sort of righteous anger, as though Alfred hadn't deserved everything that had happened to him. Reading these journals, Alfred couldn't believe he'd ever been so... young. He supposed he was only twenty-one now, but he felt too old; if one was only given Alfred's journals from middle and high school, one would assume Alfred was very much dead.

An example of how simplistic it was: _I'd love a hot meal that isn't toast right now. Like soup or something. When did soup begin to sound so fucking divine? I don't like soup._ Dated to December of 2015, it was eight or so years old. It may not have been entirely innocent, but it was certainly appreciative and it was certainly of extreme longing. With context, the entire range of human emotion could be applied to this ode for soup.

If Alfred could have gone back in time, he wouldn't have spent his days waiting for a hot meal. He would have bullied his thirteen year old self into suicide; a year before anything really happened, sure, but he'd already been significantly dehumanized by then. There wasn't a point now, because Alfred had already seen all the things that tormented him and anyway, he would get a sort of glee from dying. If Alfred killed himself now, he would die in pieces; the past could have been different. Alfred tried not to linger on it too much; what was life if not regret?

Alfred decided a bowl of soup sounded really great, at least when compared with self-pity. He said good-bye to Kiku and went to the restaurant a few blocks down. Soup. What a humanizing food.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A comment would be hella lit. Have an excellent day and stay safe.


	4. Roommate Bonding Time!

Chapter Four: Roommate Bonding Time!

If one were to ask Alfred what the most impactful incident of his childhood had been, Alfred would have felt obligated to think on it. A lot of things had happened when he was a kid: his first girlfriend assaulted him on a rather repetitive, reprehensible schedule; his classmates had harassed him; any of the endless interactions with his parents would have sufficed as an incident. And then there were the smaller things: a teacher asked why he was still at the school and was he waiting to get picked up, because Alfred was the only kid still loitering around the school ten minutes after it got out, with no purpose in mind; he'd once accepted getting punched in the face for a sandwich, although he wasn't given another choice and the sandwich was just for his tormentors to feel better. Was it the larger problems that mattered when the smaller ones spoke volumes?... but in the end he had to say it was an incident that involved his parents, and was dead in the middle of "getting coerced into committing sexual acts at fourteen" and "buying a Mountain Dew in order to not look abandoned at a fair", and the actual heart of the incident was literally cat shit. The 'most impactful' incident involved his cat, and he left Illinois because of it; also, it was the only incident he allowed himself to feel guilt over because it was the only incident that was undoubtedly his fault.

Alfred tried to write about the incident fairly often, but he hadn't ever been successful. Today would be different, and Alfred knew this because he gave himself a deadline: by the end of today, he would be done writing this one scene, this one bit. This would be easy, because he'd always kept audio recordings of it. But once he started listening to the recordings he felt a bit too bad to write, relived it a bit too hard to move.

...

After a lot of rewinding, editing, and the like, Alfred came up with this:

_"Alright, so I learned something today, right? The cat has diarrhea-,"_

_"How did you learn that?"_

_"She pooped on my cables. I noticed when I went to grab some clothes so I could take a shower. Anyway, I'd like some advice on how to clean my cables."_

_"She's doing it on purpose for some reason," My father says, ignoring my request for advice. "Like, the other day-," and he turns to my mother, blocking any further conversation._

_For around a minute I stand there before prompting, "My cables?"_

_"Just unplug them and run them under water," and they go back to talking._

_I return to my room and grab the cables, noting that somehow, my cat managed to get all of them, and wash them as best as I can with water in my bathroom sink. Once I finish, I go back downstairs to get advice on how to clean my carpet, to which my parents say, "Use toilet paper". I note that there are proper paper towels and other supplies in the house; my parents simply don't want me to use them._

_I start on the rather arduous process and clean for a while, until my father comes in. "Is the cat still here?"_

_"Yeah. Under my bed," I say. He tells me to move aside, so I do, and then he proceeds to lift the mattress up in an attempt to scare the cat out._

_For ten seconds I watched as he lifted the mattress as high as he could, and all I could focus on was the lamp on my nightstand and how much I despised it, how much I wished for it to get pushed off the nightstand and shatter. (I later replaced that lamp with a better one, and that nightstand with a desk.) In that moment, listening to my father's condescending tone toward my cat ("Only one of us is coming out alive" and other strange comments), I could only feel hatred for my lamp. It was a particularly ugly lamp, and though I put a wind chime on it, it made no difference; it also didn't often turn on when I attempted to turn it on. What a waste of space, I thought._

_Finally I offer to get the cat. After she's in my arms, I start making my way downstairs to take her to the basement when my father says, "Give her to me."_

_"I've got her."_

_"Give her to me."_

_"I've got her," I repeat._

_"Give her to me." So I do, because that is the most resistance I could muster against my parents. My cat leaves my arms. My father proceeds to carry her, and bounces her back-first against the floor a few times, squeezing her harshly for the rest of it. During this time, my cat makes the most infernal noises- really just horrifying shit._

_Eventually my father makes it to the base of the stairs. He presses her against the floor, hard, and then holds her above his head, still squeezing. My cat urinates and jumps away._

_My father stands there with the most imbecilic look on his face; one would have to see it to his face at the time to properly get an idea of such unrivaled, unwarranted shock. He had spent the past few months telling me how horrid I was, how stupid, how inhumane, how much of a failure, and in that moment I realized we were equals. Unfortunately, I did not think to take pictures._

_In those moments and in the weeks following, I loathed my father. But after the moments passed, and my father got that goddamn near shell-shocked look on his face and went back to anger, I volunteered to clean it up. I knew I would have to, and still as my mother comes in she screams, "What the fuck?" as she so often did, and turns to my father. "You squeezed her too hard!"_

_"No, she did that on purpose!"_

_"I know you." I, personally, could not see the appeal in marrying someone if one knew them quite this well; however, I kept my mouth shut because my scrutiny was never much appreciated. "And now I have to clean it up-," she whirls to face me, "This is your fault- you know how he gets, so why did you tell him?"_

_"I'll clean it up," I respond. This seems to placate my mother, and she turns away._

_My parents go downstairs to chase the cat. I listen to them scramble about and think of how much of a failure my father is, to waste everybody's time, to truly inconvenience everyone, while I continue to clean bodily fluids with toilet paper. I listen to them move the couch; it occurs to me that I could help them, but I don't offer and they don't ask. I figure they've forgotten I was there._

_When I finished cleaning the cat urine, I returned to my room and took several minutes to laugh. I couldn't stop, and while I was laughing I wondered what was wrong with me; still, it hurt to be serious, so I carried on laughing as though the situation was the most hilarious thing in the world. I was the only person in the entire world, the whole small world with its four walls, tiny and claustrophobic and reeking of cat shit. I was the only person until my parents shouted at me asking what the hell I was doing, what was wrong with me. I did not respond._

_I played New York's state song that night, as loudly as I could, as I cleaned. I had been obsessed with New York for a few months by then, but that was the night I decided I was going to move. My parents ignored my chastisement, though New York's state song is godawful and they hated the place fervently. I enjoyed it very much that night._

_I took a shower when I was finally done, maybe an hour and a half later than intended, and then I shut out all the lights. I did not sleep, and I returned to school rather upset._

So that didn't go well. Not only was Alfred reminded of his guilt, but he was also reminded that this incident involving cat shit, the one thing that hadn't actually hurt him, was still the most impactful thing to happen. Heinous abuse at the hands of no small number of individuals, but cat shit was the only one he thought of unprovoked. The smaller things really did speak volumes.

Even if it hadn't been the most impactful, this writing just wasn't good. 'Said'/'says' was repeated too often, and the switch of tenses was excusable given the timing but still didn't fit quite right. The writing was both predictable and unpredictable; it was generally bad, as it gave the reader everything. Alfred wasn't planning on publishing this, but he still wanted it to seem readable.

After writing, Alfred deleted the recordings. He'd kept them for around seven years now; he'd always felt that a huge weight ought to lift off him, that he could finally relax. But instead he just knew he had to keep this writing now, because it was all he had to remind himself why he'd left.

"Hey, Alfred. Do you want a 3D puzzle?"

Alfred looked up from his phone, echoed, "A 3D puzzle?"

"Yes. I thought I was buying one, but I accidentally ordered two." Kiku held out the puzzle. It was a wooden puzzle, and the end result was supposed to be a hot air balloon.

"Looks neat," Alfred commented. Kiku did not dignify such a waste of words with a response, so Alfred continued, "We should do it together, dude!"

"Together?"

"Yeah! Totally!"

/\

That night they did the 3D puzzles. Alfred liked it; it was a very calming activity, and he felt very smart even though he was just following extremely detailed instructions. It didn't take any glue, either; it amazed Alfred that anything so complicated could stay together without much help.

They sat in silence for the most part, but it was still very enjoyable. Alfred took the time to think of what he was grateful for: he was glad to be in New York City; he was glad Kiku had given him a 3D puzzle; he was glad he had a roommate that didn't get mad at him over trivial things... Alfred supposed that last one was normal and that he ought to expect that from people, and he was trying his best to go back to that blissful state that most people were surely in, in which one isn't grateful for a human amount of respect, or where they're glad to go to bed but not necessarily thinking of how nice it was to be able to sleep in one at all. But then, what was so wrong with being grateful? Was appreciation really so terrible if it meant he was happy?

"I'm going to Vermont to go camping with my family on Saturday."

"Where are you going?" Alfred asked, even though he knew absolutely nothing about Vermont.

"Waterbury."

"Oh. Nice." Alfred had no idea where that was, and he had no idea why Kiku and his native New Yorker family would go to Vermont to go camping.

It took several hours to finish the puzzle, and as soon as they were done Alfred insisted on taking pictures so he could remember it well. Kiku didn't like the idea of pictures very much, but he complied with Alfred's demands. The rest of the night passed unrecorded and forgotten.

...

Apparently Kiku found Alfred to be good company, because the next day he asked if Alfred wanted to play Tetris. Alfred hated Tetris, but denouncing a game that had absolutely nothing unlikeable about it was not a great way to leave a positive impression.

Ten minutes later they were sitting on the couch, and Alfred was playing Tetris. Alfred hadn't played this game since he was fifteen, and he'd had absolutely no desire to do so in the last six years.

"Wow, you're pretty good," Kiku commented.

"Thanks." Alfred almost beamed at the compliment, although it was easy to sort blocks. After a few more minutes Alfred handed the device back to Kiku. "You can play. I'll just watch. I hate Tetris." The last three words came out rather bitter, a harsh and unexpected confession. It surely was unexpected; Alfred had never told anyone he hated Tetris before; not even the people at laundromats got to know about such an intimate, horrifying aspect of Alfred's world view. Hating Tetris was quite possibly the most tragic thing to ever happen to Alfred.

"What? Why?" Kiku took the controller, but didn't start the game. "There's nothing there to hate."

Kiku was right; there was nothing there anymore.

"Is it the coloring, or the pacing of the game?" Kiku wondered.

Hating Tetris was ridiculous and petty, and Alfred knew that. Alfred shouldn't have let people ruin good things for him, but he had, and now playing Tetris just made him feel like something was going to go horribly wrong. Tetris, personal shorthand for extreme mental agony at any moment he happened to be reminded of why he didn't like Tetris anymore, and how he should have been dead even if Tetris was also shorthand for an attempt at survival. Tetris, also meaning naiveté. What a versatile word- how a human life could add more meaning to such a simple, specific concept! Tetris or marzipan or clothing with buttons or pocket knives or anyone touching his face or his hands or his hair or his wrists or his elbows or his legs or anywhere at all- it was all code for tactile hallucinations. Pain in his scalp, phantom hands leaving a tingling sensation everywhere else. Perhaps Alfred was being a bit unfair. What about marzipan? Alfred had loved marzipan; it was delicious! And loathing buttons made it difficult to buy clothes. Tetris clearly wasn't the only victim in Alfred's tragic subconscious assignment of definitions to too-significant words.

"It's too repetitive. I just feel like I wasted so much time," Alfred answered. "Like somehow life would be different if I didn't play so much Tetris when I was fourteen. I know that sounds dumb, but my grades really suffered when I was fourteen." Sometimes Alfred wondered if he'd had an addiction at fourteen, if his immense suffering had really been of his own accord and he could've just chosen not to play such a game. It was too late to experiment now.

Alfred couldn't be sure if Kiku found that explanation sufficient because Kiku didn't respond. The pain eventually went away. The tingling went away. Alfred went away, to his room, because if he couldn't be normal and do normal things with normal people then maybe he deserved to be alone. Kiku didn't really think anything of Alfred's leaving; to Kiku, Tetris was not this monumental force and Alfred's disdain for the game was not necessarily a deal-breaker for their quasi-friendship. Kiku continued to play Tetris by himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A comment would be hella lit. Have a great day/night and stay safe.


	5. Maple Syrup

Chapter Five: Maple Syrup

Kiku was on his trip, which meant Alfred had the apartment to himself. He could do a lot of things now: take a somewhat longer shower, eat by himself in the living room, turn on the TV and sit in front of it to stare vacantly at characters of a TV show he didn't care for.

Instead he went to the library, which was not necessarily taking advantage of how empty his apartment was but was still something to do. Maybe Alfred could spend some quality alone time on the couch, reading a book! He wouldn't, but he could do so if he wanted to!

As with most libraries, this library held plenty of books, and CDs and DVDs and other articles of entertainment. Almost everything flew over Alfred's head; he simply didn't care for the majority of entertainment anymore. The only things that did catch his eye were Franz Kafka's works, which appeared sadly neglected. Alfred owned his books, but was still so heavily influenced by their parasocial relationship that he wanted to rent them anyway. After a good thirty minutes of looking around the fiction section, Alfred decided he simply wasn't into fiction anymore, and rented a couple autobiographies. At one point Alfred had disliked autobiographies, but a first-person recount of one's life sounded all too great.

When he got home, he realized that he still disliked autobiographies.

...

The next day Alfred woke up feeling quite euphoric; that had been one full day of not feeling awful, and with luck he could get another one in. Alfred figured he should plan out a good day, just so he wasn't setting himself up for failure. Today, Alfred's idea of pure bliss was doing adult things, or things that weren't particularly appropriate for children. That was how Alfred decided he was going to go to Walmart; the fact that he was nearly out of food was not a factor. Alfred put on gloves with something tantamount to happiness; he loved wearing gloves, as his hands were always cold. He put on his favorite, indeed his only, coat, and he was off.

On the way there he bought himself coffee; this, too, was a humanizing product. It tasted of humanity and made him feel like everything he was not. He was almost convinced that he would belong with all the paying patrons of Walmart (although, to be fair, it was not guaranteed that they were paying).

If coffee was humanizing, Walmart was glorifying; granted, the weight of both depended on how much one valued a human life, but Alfred viewed humanity as the most basic shared component of humankind. Glory, on the other hand, had to be going grocery shopping and paying with one's own money, or the feeling of being worthwhile. Alfred supposed they were the same thing.

The first thing Alfred did was print out the pictures he'd taken the other day, of the 3D puzzles and hanging out with Kiku. He did this simply for the amusement of doing so, and was elated by this as well. What a person- what an individual Alfred happened to be, to be able to print out pictures of his own memories with another person for the sake of remembering them. Alfred was not invisible, if not evidenced by the pictures themselves then certainly evidenced by the woman standing behind him, waiting to get her own pictures printed out. Alfred had an even better realization, now: he was the same as this woman. They were most likely doing the same thing, printing out memories they shared with another person or thing. They were both people, leading immensely complicated lives! Wasn't that so beautiful? Wasn't this feeling worth everything in the world, even printing out pictures at the Walmart that almost hosted a shooting a while back?

Alfred eventually forced himself to take it down a notch; he was smiling too widely to really be appropriate for the given setting, and he was smiling for an entirely imbecilic reason. _What regular person gets so happy about feeling like everyone else?_ He couldn't reject that thought because it seemed entirely proper criticism, and he challenged himself to not think about humanity or anything related to the worth of human life for the rest of his trip to Walmart. Alfred was still happy, though, and he bought a small carton of milk and a box of cereal and several frozen dinners, just for a change of pace.

...

On the way back to the apartment, Alfred and around fifteen other pedestrians were almost killed by a speeding car.

Alfred, the unwitting hero, saved them; he'd been walking a couple feet away from the rest of the group and, when the car came barreling around the corner, he instinctively put his hands out and braced himself. It was nice that he did that instead of getting out of the way; he was pushed back several feet and a few pedestrians got hit anyway, but with a breath-taking force instead of a lethal one. Alfred's hands were pretty scraped up and the tar was also relatively screwed, but everyone was okay.

Before any of the others could really process what had happened, Alfred began speed-walking away from the scene. After five minutes he sighed and slowed down; he was surely in the clear. Nobody had thought to follow him; everyone must have been too shaken.

And then a hand was on his shoulder. Alfred jumped and spun around, only to be met with a man that didn't look particularly threatening; he had somewhat long blond hair and a slight stubble, and was generally too out of breath to really be harmful.

"What- what's your name?" the man asked him.

"Alfred." He wasn't very interested in the man's name, but asked anyway.

"Francis." Francis leaned over, hands on his knees, and breathlessly repeated, "Alfred. Alfred," as if he was trying to save it. "How did you do it?"

"I don't know."

"Well, thank you. You saved me."

"Yeah. I-I have somewhere to be. Goodbye."

"Wait! You should come to my place for dinner," Francis bursted out.

"What?"

"You... should come to my place for dinner. So I can properly repay you."

"No."

...

Alfred ate dinner with Francis anyway. He had decided to eat at a crowded diner because it felt like home; the restaurant mimicked an old person's house in its decorations, which were both plentiful and vintage. All in all, the diner brought to mind a Southern family reunion. Alfred was not Southern, but it was amazing how such scenarios could become universal beacons of comfort, almost guaranteed as long as it was a professional setting rather than the real deal.

"Oh! Oh, that's him! That's the guy that saved me!"

Alfred recognized that voice, and the rest of the diner stopped to listen in case they did. "Alfred! Alfred, come here!" Francis performed a rather graceful come-hither motion and waved expectantly at him.

The nearest patrons of the diner watched as Alfred reluctantly went over to Francis's table.

"So this is Alfred," Francis told his tablemate.

"Yes. I believe we've met before," Arthur responded. "Can you do laundry yet?" He asked, half joke and half genuine curiosity. It sounded very rude.

"Ha-ha. Yeah, totally."

"Did you order yet?" Francis cut into the conversation, waved a menu in front of Alfred's face.

"No, not yet."

"We'll pay! It's the least we can do, since you saved my life!"

Francis and Arthur soon forgot he was there. They were arguing with each other, at first banter and then very energetic yelling. It was beginning to make Alfred nervous, although they weren't necessarily being mean to each other. A profound sadness took over.

The drinks came; Alfred tried to focus on his soda, sipped it slowly in an effort to calm his stomach. When he couldn't focus on his soda, he focused on how dry his throat was instead. By now Alfred really wanted to leave, because it seemed the entire diner was shouting; it was just too loud, and Alfred didn't quite like loud environments. But he stayed because Francis and Arthur had paid for his meal, and Alfred felt it would be rude to leave now. While he would likely never see Francis and Arthur again, he still didn't believe in being rude to people that provided food. So he stayed, and he even made it through the meal.

At the end, Francis gave Alfred his number and told Alfred that he could call if he ever needed any favors, and then he made Alfred text him to ensure further messages would send. Every moment was a lifetime, but eventually Alfred made it out the door. The diner had been overwhelming; the lights, food, and general waste of such a place had peeved him, but nothing put Alfred more unreasonably on edge than loud noise. Once he was out he made what he could only think to describe as an 'anxiety noise'; he let out a rather shaky sigh and forced himself to keep walking. He felt very bad, so he tried to take his mind off it; Alfred tried to be more descriptive, as though he was going to write this. All that came to mind was 'anxiety noise' and 'bad' repeated over and over.

The city was dark and cold, and that helped to calm his nerves. Alfred couldn't wait to get home, but when he found himself safely in bed he couldn't force himself to be grateful; instead he could only wonder why the good days didn't last.

———————————————————————————

Alfred was on the news the next morning; he was the talk of the country, really. It wasn't that Alfred had saved fifteen people, roommates and partners and friends alike; it was that he had saved a _state representative_. Normally he might have been in a panic over the idea that anyone from Illinois would hear the news, but now he didn't care. Alfred had left Illinois, and everyone knew. So what? What could possibly be done about that now?

He poured himself a bowl of cereal, but he wasn't nearly as happy as when he'd bought it. 'Happy', 'sad', 'human'- it didn't really matter, did it? He focused on his cereal instead, which was soggy and room-temperature by the time he finished it.

After that he went to revise his writing and maybe write about something else. Perhaps it wasn't particularly wise to force oneself to relive the same memories over and over, but Alfred had already been torturing himself for several years with such memories and one more time wouldn't make a difference.

He read over the incident, and it was just as horrible as when he'd left it. Alfred couldn't even think of a way to improve this; it was garbage. Absolute, utter garbage. How shameful.

Shame. After the incident, that was all there was. Shame and illness went hand in hand; for several months afterward, Alfred had felt sick after thinking about what had happened. And then he grew so accustomed to physical illness and shame that vomiting for any reason whatsoever brought back shame. Alfred thought this a bit dramatic now that he was older; worse things had happened to him by then, but he'd been so fixated on this particular issue, which hadn't even been that bad.

While Alfred thought now that the incident was not very bad, he still found shame and illness bubbling up in equal measures. He hadn't felt sick in a long time; these days it was so much easier to live. Life seemed so light, but now it was condensed in his stomach, attempting to claw itself up his throat. Oddly enough, Alfred felt incredibly ill now; not only was he nauseous as he had once been, but he was also physically weak as well. He was trembling over cat shit. How wonderful.

Alfred did what he always did when he was sick: he ate a bit. When that didn't work he went on a walk, just for the change of scenery, just to get away from the pages. It didn't make him feel much better.

...

Alfred only turned to go home once he was absolutely exhausted and had been walking for several hours; he spent almost the whole day walking, and given that it was wintertime, it was nearing dark when he got home. Kiku was sitting at the table, listening to music.

"Kiku. You're back." Alfred had completely forgotten that Kiku was supposed to be home today.

"Yeah. I brought you maple syrup." Kiku motioned to a small bottle, more decorative than anything.

"Oh, thanks."

"Did I miss anything?"

"Nah. Thanks for the maple syrup."

"You're welcome."

Alfred entered a state of pure bliss in the following seconds. Elation: what a difficult emotion to describe, especially when prompted by a bottle of maple syrup. Sweet, sticky, divine. A product of humanity. What a wonderful gift.

"Thanks," Alfred said, again.

"Yeah."

Alfred went to his room and put the small bottle on his desk, and stared at it as he wished that he always felt like a human being. He wished it wasn't this fleeting emotion, brought on by maple syrup and trips to Walmart and taken away by loud noises and mere thoughts. But Alfred didn't believe in making wishes that wouldn't come true, so he turned to what he was grateful for: he was grateful for this tiny bottle of maple syrup, and he was grateful that he felt like a human sometimes rather than never feeling like one at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A comment would be _hella lit_. Have an excellent day and stay safe.


	6. Christmas

A blizzard hit in the days approaching Christmas. Alfred's flight had been cancelled. As it was, he found himself stranded at the airport with little money and certainly not enough money to go back to his apartment the way he'd come (via taxi). Alfred was more than a little bit upset by this, but he decided to look at what he was grateful for instead: he didn't have to see his parents again.

Alfred had always been taught that loyalty was the most honorable trait a person could have; loyalty was everything, and to Alfred loyalty was simply not letting people down. Alfred's sense of loyalty had never satisfied his parents, and as such the family trait only went one way, with Alfred being the one undeserving. Still, he called his parents, because surely this had to be what loyalty was.

His mother picked up on the second ring. "Hey, Mom," Alfred said, clearing his throat. "I won't be able to make it 'cause my flight was cancelled. A blizzard hit." Alfred could have rescheduled, but why wouldn't he hop on this opportunity?

"Oh... that's okay, sweetheart," his mother replied. She didn't sound quite okay with this, but Alfred didn't ask and she didn't tell.

"Is the weather bad over there?" Alfred asked.

"Oh- just as usual. Not horrible, not for Illinois."

"Glad to h-hear it," Alfred mumbled. He forced himself to repeat it louder this time, without the stutter.

He was about to ask how she was doing when his mother asked, "Do you want to talk to your father?"

Alfred didn't like talking to his father, but he didn't have a choice: it was either this or he hung up. It occurred to him that nothing was stopping him from hanging up, but he still didn't want to. "Sure."

A slight shifting of the phone followed by, "Been up to anything lately, Alfred?"

Alfred definitely didn't want to talk about his career, New York City, or really anything he'd been up to at all. He thought of the car incident instead; there was no way his parents hadn't heard about it, as they'd been obsessed with the news when he was younger. "No," Alfred replied.

Silence.

Alfred opened his mouth to speak, but everything he could think to say was incredibly rude. He wondered how he'd ever spoken to his parents before, and then he remembered that in the last few years of living with them, he really hadn't. Words foamed at the mouth; there was nothing so brilliant as righteous anger, but he shoved it back down. "Well, have a good Christmas, Dad." Alfred didn't wait for a response; he'd done the bare minimum to maintain the relationship, which meant he could hang up now.

If one just listened to the conversation, they might've thought that Alfred only had a somewhat awkward relationship with his parents; this was not the case. It was the sort of thing only an insider could notice; Alfred's mother had never, not once, called him 'sweetheart' or 'love' or anything both general and endearing. Alfred hadn't called his parents 'Mom'/'Dad' while growing up. Alfred hadn't had a conversation with his father that wasn't degrading or hostile in a rather long time. With all this in mind, it was amazing that they all still slipped into their places, that they all still knew to imitate a real family, even if the words weren't quite right. The previous minute details of the situation were pointless to hold onto, just nuances that were easily forgotten. Nuances, the sort of things that make being in an airport impossible. Anywhere else Alfred may have been able to deal with the realization that his personal game of make-believe was falling apart; here, it just seemed so impossible, and he felt as though he desperately needed to kick something, or swear it all away.

Alfred wasn't a vulgar man, and he certainly wasn't a particularly violent man. So he slipped his phone into his pocket and did the logical thing, which was of course to take the metro home.

...

Kiku was staying home, too; he was significantly less happy about it, as he actually wanted to see his family. Alfred tried not to seem too happy, just for Kiku's sake, but it still struck him as odd that Kiku actually wanted to see his family over the holidays. Alfred rarely wanted to see his family; even when he missed them, he didn't want to actually deal with them.

Alfred didn't want to deal with not dealing with them either, so instead of thinking about his family he went out to collect baking supplies. Alfred was absolutely determined to bake for Christmas; it wasn't a tradition, but he hadn't baked since Illinois and was determined to make new memories. Besides, Alfred was excellent at baking. It'd be a shame if such talent went to waste, right?

Alfred collected a plethora of baking supplies and began to walk to the cash register. On the way, he noticed a wrapping paper display, which immediately prompted the thought, _I should get something for Kiku_. Just like every other person Alfred knew but didn't know well enough, he would get Kiku expensive chocolate, the sort shaped like tools and trains and shoes, dark chocolate dusted with color.

He went to the nearest chocolate store, grateful that he lived in a fairly tourist-y area that would have expensive chocolate shapes. He bought around $25 worth of various shapes, which were quickly packaged in a nice box. It was a worthy gift, a worthy gesture.

Alfred passed a homeless man on his way home, who rasped, "Do you have any money to spare?"

Alfred stood and stared, debated on whether or not to give this man money. Alfred's parents had never given money to the American homeless, because in their minds everyone had the same opportunities they did. Well, now Alfred was in New York City, and he was slowly running out of money, and New York City called for different opportunities than the suburbs of Chicago. And more importantly, Alfred didn't know this man. It would be selfish not to give, wouldn't it? Especially nearing Christmas, when it was so cold.

"Are you just gonna sit there staring? Don't you have anywhere to be?" The man snapped. He'd clearly accepted by now that he wasn't going to get any money.

Alfred pulled a twenty from his wallet and gave it to the man. But he still wasn't a generous person- he still wasn't good. This action just wasn't selfish, as long as one ignored all the ways that it was.

* * *

The next day, Alfred wanted to make cookies. That couldn't be too difficult; Alfred had made cookies dozens of times. He listened to music and combined the ingredients and just followed the recipe, which wasn't very difficult. But when he pulled them out they were significantly burned, for whatever reason.

Alfred was dismayed, to say the least. But he had cookies now, so he couldn't just throw them away. He couldn't help wondering what had went wrong as he put them in a container. Was it the oven? Was it the recipe? Or was it him?

...

There had been times where Alfred had fallen in love with the human form. Funny, how things like that happened; Alfred had mastered manufactured emotions, though he refused to admit to himself that he couldn't remember the last time he really felt something that wasn't partially or completely induced by writing, the last time he'd really kept a reality-induced emotion for more than a few minutes. Even his little bout of panicking while at the diner the other day hadn't lasted very long. That was the case with Alfred's temporary love for the human form: once he'd been paid to write an article on what a miracle the human body was, and he had delivered.

The body really did do a lot, but it had been a very long time since Alfred had been appreciative; he couldn't remember the last time he was entirely comfortable. When he was younger, he had very much liked the idea of sex, much like other teenagers, at least until his first girlfriend had assaulted him- but still, it had kept him from mutilating himself when the disconnect seemed to be too much, and that was important, that was a victory (no matter how pathetic). Alfred hadn't been able to deal with such an obvious hatred the way he did now; not that he did anything particularly different to stave off intrusive thoughts these days, but he didn't hurt himself anymore and that was a victory, too.

A few years down the line, his cat had to be put down. Alfred had despised the way the body looked after dying, and he would be damned if he let the fucking thing make a fool of him one more time. So Alfred had continued to live, which was... neat.

Everything about the human body was a miracle, from the trillions of cells to the way everything usually seamlessly fit. But Alfred still hated his, although he would have hated any body he had the misfortune to inhabit. It was hard not to imagine leaving this bastard. The way he could observe his shoulder blades moving under his skin was enough to make him sick. The audacity of the heartbeat, too, was stifling. The fact that his body worked so hard to keep him alive, and in the end didn't actually care about him- Alfred could have been anybody and it still would've done its thing- upset him as well. Some days the idea that anyone could find him attractive made him want to maim himself, or make himself unrecognizable, just enough so that no one would ever want 'him' again, just enough so he was a bloody mass of carved flesh... but that wasn't so often anymore.

So what kept Alfred from mutilating himself to a condemning extent now was that he thought he'd probably enjoy it, and he didn't deserve enjoyment; besides, no matter how he wanted to, it would be bad to connect physical pain with any sort of emotional pleasure. This bothered him as well; not relief- pleasure. That's what it would be. Alfred hated this body with a vengeance, but he didn't deserve the pleasure that might come from hurting it. It and he- they were not one, and yet Alfred couldn't hurt it without hurting himself in some way.

Finally the water was hot. Alfred climbed into the shower, and though he didn't hurt himself anymore, he still thought about it.

* * *

_October 26, 2016_

_My first experience with negotiating prices was in a tourist center in Greece. "That's nine euros," the shopkeeper told me as I went up to him. I hesitated and finally asked if I could get it for eight euros. The man smiled. "Of course you can." I paid and walked out with my overpriced Hades idol, more ashamed than anything._

Today I wish I could have negotiated with a vending machine.

I had walked up to the vending machine to get a bag of almonds (to go with my brilliant lunch of half a pickle and a cheese stick) only to realize that I'd lost a quarter. All I could really do was sit there, so that's what I did. That vending machine wasn't going to take pity on me, and neither were any passerby. I knew that and I stayed anyway. I thought, surely in a more forgiving world an actual person would be selling food. But perhaps this was the most forgiving one; I could only think that things would turn out the same way, but I would be humiliated instead of disappointed.

I recognized this one guy I used to give food. Even back then I needed it, and he never did, but he always asked and I would have felt bad saying no. I always figured he would pay me back; after all, who was shameless enough to continuously ask for food from the starving kid? I, the starving kid, wasn't even shameless enough to not pay someone back.

"Hey. Got a quarter?" I asked him.

"Nah. Sorry." He wouldn't even look at me, or say my name. I wondered if he even recognized me, or if he felt bad about anything. I watched as he bought two bags of chips and gave them to his friends, and I continued to eat my cheese stick until lunch was over.

...

A few years back Alfred would never have considered buying expensive chocolate. Perhaps it wasn't the wisest decision now, but back then it was immensely important that he bought food from the vending machine as wisely as possible. Even if Alfred had bought expensive chocolate back then, he certainly wouldn't have given it to someone else.

"I got you a Christmas gift," Alfred said, holding the gift out to Kiku.

"Oh... thanks," Kiku responded, taking it from him. The gift was poorly wrapped; Alfred had little experience with wrapping gifts and all the tutorials he had seen were apparently not meant for that particular type of box. As it was Alfred had ended up using pretty much the entire roll of wrapping paper for an 8x16x2 container.

Kiku opened the box, pulled out the tiny chocolate shapes. "Thank you. This is... very thoughtful."

"No problem, dude," Alfred responded. It occurred to him that Kiku probably hadn't gotten him anything, and now it was just going to be awkward. Alfred had just wanted to feel like a good person, damn it, and now he'd probably made things awkward.

"I-I got you something too, actually," Kiku said. "I was going to give it to you later, but now is a good time." Kiku went to his room and retrieved a small box, which was excellently wrapped, and gave it to him.

And now Alfred felt a bit worse, because he hadn't wanted or expected his roommate to get anything for him. He still smiled and opened it; it was a candle.

This was... a strange gift, to say the least. But it was about as personal as expensive chocolate.

And then Alfred noted how it was personalized: it was an Illinois-scented candle. "Wow. Thanks, dude. This is... really great." Alfred knew he was coming across as disappointed. "Really. This is really awesome," he emphasized, because it was awesome. Because sure Alfred had left Illinois, but he was still a bit of a nationalist, and anything at all that related to his home state was appreciated.

"I wasn't sure if you'd have wanted the Illinois candle or the New York candle, but you talk about Illinois a lot," Kiku explained.

"Yeah. I love Illinois. It's home," Alfred replied. "Thanks, dude. Do you have a lighter?"

Kiku supplied a lighter, and Alfred lit the candle. They waited a few minutes in silence, until finally the scent was a bit stronger.

"Does it- does it smell like Illinois?"

"Not at all," Alfred answered. "But someone must have designed it with home in mind, and that's what's important. Thanks for the candle, dude." Alfred paused, elaborated in an effort to show what thought this candle had given him. "When I was a kid, I read a lot of articles and books about New York City, which were usually written by people who weren't really connected to the place. But I would still fantasize about living here again, 'cause it reminded me of here. So it's really not the scent of the candle that matters; it's that someone thought of Illinois while they were designing it." Alfred hoped the message wasn't lost among his rambling on New York City; it would only serve as confusion. "It's nice to be reminded of home," Alfred said. But now he was caught on the nuances of calling Illinois 'home'.

Alfred took the candle back to his room and left Kiku alone. How was he supposed to convey how much he appreciated the candle?... but there was no point in worrying about it; most people didn't need footnotes to help describe how they felt about their home states. Today Alfred would be most people. He paid attention to the scents of the candle and imagined that he was home, and that Illinois was home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A comment would be hella lit. Have an excellent day and stay safe.


	7. Fireworks

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Really sorry for this one being late. I have no excuses.

_January 1, 2016_

_I want it all to happen again. Everything is fine right now. I can sleep in my bed; I'm home, so I have more access to food. Everything is fine, and this is what I always wanted, but now I want things to just not be fine._

_I feel horrible, pretty much like an animal. It's easy to disregard such a feeling when you're starving, because the top priority is food. But now everything is fine and I still feel horrible, or maybe it's that I want to feel horrible. I wonder if I'm always going to feel this way, and what being human feels like. Will I be horrified about the past? For now life just seems so dull. My whole life revolved around pulling together enough food to get through the day, and now it doesn't and I almost miss it. When I'm human again, will I feel worse than I do now? What then? Now already feels bad enough._

The answer to such a question was only naturally that Alfred always felt bad. It didn't feel very great to say it, but life had almost been easier when he'd been focused on not starving: food had been pure bliss and hunger had been an extremely terrifying thing, and the entire spectrum of human emotion had fit between them. However, what Alfred had felt was not human; rather, it was the most animalistic part of every possible human emotion.

Humans were fragile, emotional beings compared to other animals. Now that Alfred was older and could fulfill basic needs, emotion was much more confusing and he was generally more sensitive than he had been.

For instance, the aftermath- the mixed emotions on his childhood, the urge to distinguish the good from the bad and to defend his family. The urge to both deny that things were that bad and to lay and dwell on what had happened for innumerable days. Alfred's present ideas of nationalism and heroism, and his reluctant quasi-loyalty to New York City. Appreciation and love for places. How much more simple life had been when he was only worried about food and shelter, and how horrible it was to admit that it could be more 'simple' when it obviously was not better.

The most confusing human emotion to Alfred was obviously disgust. The disgust he had for physical form, the disdain for every aspect of his being- of course that led to loneliness, because he'd never been able to find any sort of word that would describe how he felt. Surely if there was not some mental condition that matched up with the pure hatred Alfred had for physical form, then nobody else had ever felt the way he did. Not that it had to be a mental condition, but it felt bad and it negatively impacted him occasionally, so why wouldn't it be? In years of searching, he'd never even found an article or social media post describing anything remotely similar to how he felt.

Earlier that day, Alfred had burned himself while flipping a tortilla chip to put back in the oven. Alfred had flipped hundreds, if not thousands, of tortilla chips, but this was the first time he'd ever gotten a blister because of it. While Alfred wouldn't normally let what he hoped was an undiagnosed mental disorder get in the way of his life, his first thought upon seeing the blister was: _Really don't want that thing to pop, that's fucking disgusting. And if it does pop and it gets infected, that's an aesthetically displeasing health problem._ The second thought was, _I won't have to see the blister pop or get infected if I just kill myself before it does._

Alfred had had better reasons to kill himself before (although, of course, there was never a genuinely good reason to kill oneself); however, at the time of the blister he was convinced that it was the worst thing to happen to him in at least two years. Alfred could have handled a full-on burn, but just a blister? How horrible. And everyone just got blisters, at one point or another, and they were fine with it? How could other people handle blisters the size of their palm if Alfred couldn't even look at the tiny blister on his finger?

It was only now, an hour or so after the blister, that Alfred thought to put a bandage on his finger. Now he couldn't see it, but unfortunately, he could still feel it. The pain would go away in a few hours, but the blister would take a few days. Alfred wasn't willing to wait that long.

...

Alfred was incredibly lucky to have gotten a life-ending blister on December 31st, because if he'd gotten it on December 30th, he definitely would be dead at the moment. But now that it was already noon, he could wait until after the New Year to die; he could watch the fireworks and have a nice time out before dying. As long as he didn't pop the blister before then...

After the blizzard calmed down, Kiku had fled to Ithaca in order to see his family. Logically Alfred was able to place that Kiku just really loved his relatives, but personally he could not understand it. Personally he could not understand why anyone would leave the largest city in the United States during a major holiday just to go meet their family in a college town. Alfred didn't need to understand, and he made no attempt to avoid self indulgence now.

It wasn't that he was any better, Alfred reminded himself. Alfred already had plans for where he was going to see the fireworks; he still planned to stay a distance away, even though he was in New York City now. Like many Americans, Alfred had grown up watching the ball drop each year. Now that Alfred was actually here, it seemed rather anticlimactic; besides, he didn't want to deal with the crowds. So he picked a park somewhat close to the apartments, where he'd be able to see the fireworks but barely hear them. It was not much better than Ithaca at all.

* * *

Six hours until the New Year. Alfred decided he would take a shower, just to pass the time.

Little things were usually the hardest, and Alfred found himself sitting on the tile floor. But he hated being this close to the rest of himself, especially since the shower was so small and he had to actually feel his skin instead of, say, fabric and warmth; he closed his eyes to compensate, and sat for at least twenty minutes. This was his last shower, and he spent it curled under the water, eyes closed tightly, pretending that this closeness was just humidity and not actually his body.

Once he was out of the shower, he got dressed and made trips to several ATMs. He pulled out a total of 2,400, which was almost all he had in his account; the last 7.63 didn't really matter and anyway, he wasn't going to interact with another person just to get it.

...

One hour and thirty minutes until the New Year. Where did the time go once it was gone?

Alfred finished a book by Thomas Wolfe. Finally he could say he'd finished all the books he'd started; over the years he'd built a habit of reading dozens of books at a time, but he'd finally finished the last one he was actually interested in.

Overall, Alfred was glad to be done with the novel; it was indulgence, familiarity to unfamiliarity, a likeness which he was not supposed to appreciate. Kafka, who was of course Alfred's favorite author, had written that one should read books that make them uncomfortable. Alfred wondered what Kafka would think of him; he supposed it didn't matter. Still, it seemed nothing could escape Kafka's scrutiny; even more irritatingly, Kafka had managed to slip by the fingers of everyone that admired him, including Alfred. This was what the very dead author had wanted, but it made a paradox for everyone that did know him and an immensely strong parasocial relationship for others.

The blister still hurt, but he wasn't about to admit that this body that he hated so much was finally driving him to suicide; he pulled out his phone, scrolled through the Google Docs, and found something else to make him feel vaguely suicidal.

_November 8, 2016_

_Feeling pretty bad. Guilt._

Alfred had told his cat, over and over again, that one day they would go to New York together. This obviously never happened; Alfred had taken up his parents' offer to stay home, rent free, while in college. His cat had died around that time. Alfred tried to tell himself that it was only partially his fault, that he'd been manipulated into believing he would never survive on his own and that he should die should he leave his parents. Alfred could only defend himself up to a certain point, and all he could think was that he'd been an adult when he made the decision to stay for college. It was financially the best decision he could have made, and nothing really happened during that time, but... his cat.

At least he'd been able to save up money to live in New York City, right? These past few months had been good.

Alfred sat down at the dinner table with a piece of paper, started his letter with the word 'Dear'- but no, 'Dear' was too close. Alfred wasn't close enough with anybody for such a starter. So he changed it, and it was a little better, but that was a bit too formal and he had to try again- this time he just wrote his first name at the end. His note read:

_Dude,_

_I've decided that I'm not going to pay my portion of the rent anymore._

_Alfred._

It was hardly a note and it didn't sound like him, but he never sounded like himself when he was writing. How could he make the piece more conversational- how could he provide solace? He sat on the couch to figure it out, turned on the TV for noise and tried to think of any correction he could make. It was succinct and thus perfect.

Despite his clear declaration of not paying his portion of the rent anymore, he still left the 2,400. Technically the note was still correct.

...

Alfred bought a pack of honey-roasted nuts from a street vendor and sat on a bench to wait for the fireworks. Eventually they were set off, which wasn't surprising. What else could possibly announce 2024?

There really wasn't all that much Alfred could do while he watched them; they were a little hard to see and required immense concentration. That was alright, as Alfred couldn't focus on anything else.

Of course the fireworks were arresting, but the finale? Words could not describe the beauty Alfred so often forgot. How impressive- what a pure sign of human domination. To manipulate the elements, to set them on fire, not for need but for _want_. This was normal and it was beautiful.

The finale ended as soon as it began, left only afterimages in its wake. Alfred immediately began to forget the magnificence of burning elements; how devastating, to behold something so stunning that it could only be forgotten afterward.

Alfred picked himself up off the bench, still a bit dazzled. Somehow, in a world so utterly different from that which he'd been raised in, he had the feeling that if he just turned the corner he could go home. To his childhood home, to his elementary school, when and where he'd been entirely innocent- not the bastardized version of innocence he had tried to recreate once things got so worse, but truly innocent, back when his parents had helped him with his math homework, when they had still protected him, when they had still been a family. It was true that Alfred's parents were rather abusive, but they had treated him in such a way that he had wanted only for them; they had been the only people he had in the world. His extended family didn't care for him and he didn't keep in contact with any friends, so his parents were all he had left in the world; that was to say, Alfred had nothing. Still Alfred was pathetic, still he was partly an echo of what they'd done to him; still he wanted to turn the corner and see his family, his elementary friends, and above all he wanted to turn the corner and feel the protection of his parents.

His decrepit hometown didn't rest around the corner; only more skyscrapers awaited him. But now Alfred felt obligated to pursue the feeling; he ducked into a convenience store, for once doing something for himself. If he could just block out the noise, if he could just return to the common experience of the American convenience store, he could hold onto his hometown for a bit longer.

Alfred perused the chips; he wasn't going to buy any, but the options were just like home: several types of pork rinds, a couple knockoffs of chips. The candy section: various types of gum, as well as cherry sours and watermelon slices from Market Pantry. Alfred was lucky to be on the Eastern side of the United States, because if he'd went west he wouldn't have had the same experience. One little difference, such as California's displays of tamarind spoons or Hawaii's displays of dried plums, would have thrown everything off. At least Alfred could still feel pride over being in the Eastern states. That was something, and it was better than nothing, right? How lonely would he be if he'd crossed the country to California, if he'd been westbound?

"Kid, are you gonna buy anything?"

Alfred jumped. "Oh... no, I suppose not."

"Then what are you doing in this store? Show me your pockets and get out."

Alfred only had his phone and his wallet. The woman nodded, kind enough now to wish him a Happy New Year, and again told him to leave if he wasn't going to buy anything.

Upon leaving he immediately flagged a taxi. He tried not to look around much (and obviously was also trying not to think about his pathetic loss to a blister and the body he hated so much); he employed his imagination even more, leaning heavily on the idea that he could go home again. Usually Alfred might shun this thought, and try to see clearly. Alfred was by default a very emotional person, but logic allowed one to survive. His goal wasn't to survive anymore, so he let himself believe that he was going home and that he would be happy when he got there. His parents would hug him, say they were proud and they were sorry for not listening to him when he was trying to tell them about what had happened, and they would let him take his time in forgiving them rather than telling him to get over it, that it couldn't have been that bad. They would put the past behind them and Alfred would have a family again, he would have people he could rely on. And nothing would bring back the past, nothing would make up for how they'd failed him when he had relied entirely on them, but he wouldn't be alone anymore. Such relief was intoxicating.

 _You Can't Go Home Again_. Realistically, Alfred had little in common with Wolfe's protagonist; cool, they'd both fled their hometowns in search of New York; cool, they were both writers. That was about where the reasonable similarities ended. The title was what had drawn Alfred to the book and kept him projecting throughout. Just one phrase to draw the whole book together, to draw Alfred to a dead man's words. Mostly Alfred connected with the description of emotions throughout the novel, which was to say he connected more with Wolfe than the protagonist.

What a monster of a book, over seven hundred pages long. Perhaps Alfred and Wolfe were the only two people in the world that had ever found all 743 pages completely necessary. Either way, it was over now, and despite the immense emotional journey, Alfred found himself strangely detached from it.

On the way there Alfred thought a bit more about his family. He tried his best to be a good, logical person, and he tried his best to treat himself like a person, but he was still bad. Words, so elementary, so meaningless. Alfred was selfish and every major decision he'd made in his life was selfish or cowardly or both. The truth was that Alfred was exactly like his parents, and it didn't even surprise him because he'd suspected it for a very long time. Alfred knew that family didn't define a person, that one wasn't their family. But he was a weak individual with easily swayed morals and philosophies, and he was weak in general (aside from physically, but he wouldn't think about that). Alfred had been taught that family was everything, that family was all that mattered, so he made an exception: he was weak, so he wasn't any better than the rest of his family. The cycle of abuse in Alfred's family went uncomfortably far back, at least two generations, which was three too many; who was Alfred to assume he could break it? This was who he was. He would never be anything else.

The car stopped. Alfred pulled out his wallet and gave her the last of his cash, but she wouldn't unlock the door.

"You're that kid that walks around savin' people, right? I was readin' this thing about you the other day."

Alfred smiled, although it came by as more of a grimace. "I try not to get out too much." What bastard was tracking his news appearances?

"You're not gonna kill yourself, are you?"

"Of course not. I'm just going to meet some friends."

"Awfully poor timing. Why would you meet them just after midnight?"

"I was going to meet them for Christmas, but the blizzard happened. Next best thing is getting wasted."

"Hm. Well, you shoulda-,"

"Please let me go," Alfred cut in. "I haven't had the opportunity to make many friends." The woman's voice made him incredibly uncomfortable due to its informal formality. She spoke in a staccato rhythm, emphasizing everything, but still her speech was inconsistent; the things she left off made everything feel incomplete. Alfred could have handled either, but both? Nails on a chalkboard.

The woman reluctantly unlocked the door. Alfred slipped out, was immediately met with cold. He was on a bridge, and from today onward he was accepting that nothing was going to get better.

...

To Alfred, the worst thing about being a survivor of abuse was the concept of recovery. Pure recovery would have been waking up one day and feeling like the abuse never happened at all. Realistic recovery was nothing like that; it was only pushing forward and talking about it with a mental health professional and trying not to dwell on the past too much. Why was pure recovery unattainable? Who wouldn't give anything to forget their personal tragedies? And why should incomplete recovery be anything to pursue if the job was never quite done?

It had been twenty minutes of sitting on the concrete sidewalk of the bridge. Alfred had chosen this method because it was painful and fast, but also because he'd tried to kill himself twice before. Now he would finish the job; this was almost guaranteed success. Upon hitting the water, his body would shatter; his ribs would likely break and snag his lungs, his organs would likely be displaced from the sheer blunt force of such a trauma. If that didn't kill him, he would definitely drown.

But enough thinking about the body; that wouldn't make for a happy final few moments. Alfred couldn't even feel the blister through the cold; sure, the blister had driven him here originally, but there were plenty of reasons to kill himself other than that. He would pretend the genuine suffering he'd undergone was the reason he was here, rather than fear of a fucking blister.

Back to the concept of recovery, then. Alfred felt he should have been healed by now; at the very least, he felt he should have gotten his personality back. Once, he had been cheerful and optimistic. Alfred had always figured that pain was a temporary distraction, that he would eventually revert to his old self, but now he felt that this was who he was. He would never be so innocent or happy again; his personality had been altered considerably and he didn't have the strength to change it back, and if he ever did muster the strength, the changes wouldn't be permanent. Alfred tried to mimic what he'd once been: he counted what he was grateful for, he did good things when he could, and he wanted to be happy. But none of that outweighed everything else. And really, what would he be if he woke up 'fixed' one day? Would he have the mentality of a thirteen year old? No, no, no. Alfred wasn't optimistic or cheerful anymore; he was merely a shell of what he had been.

But _that_ thinking was wrong, too! Alfred was not any less than he had been before; abuse didn't make someone worth less. He had been changed as a person, but he was just as much of a human as he had always been, and obviously he was human, even if he was too fucking stupid to feel that he was. But even this was not a comforting thought, because Alfred's only real chance at sanity was to believe that he had been less of a person before the abuse, either that he deserved it or that he needed it for 'character development' (being a writer, even when not writing fiction anymore, really did impact the mind). The truth was that the suffering was pointless and Alfred was innocent, which meant that nothing he could have done would have changed the outcome. Alfred had been powerless in his own life, forced to wait out seemingly endless tormenting, and nothing he could have done would have changed it, that all of these wasted years were just a consequence of someone else's actions and that he had been condemned to this fate from the very start; life was just unfair. Alfred told himself that truth was subjective, but this was the truth; still, he refused to admit it.

In other words, Alfred's world had already ended and now it was going to end again, somewhat like the Tribulation; hell, it even took the same amount of time. Seven years later and Alfred was still filthy and vile, and maybe he could have changed this and he didn't. But he was not strictly religious anymore; he only knew so much because when he'd had nothing he had turned to Christian YouTube channels, which only freaked him out more because they claimed that Hell was horrifying and that Heaven was just a lobby in which the followers would wait while God created a new earth, that followers were required to leave this world behind.

Alfred was a superficial being, one too attached to his country to ever be able to leave it. And really, the idea of going to Heaven was laughable; if one was created in God's image, and Alfred hated it, why the fuck would God let him in? Even if it wasn't physical form, even if 'in God's image' referred to the mentality that Adam and Eve had pre-apple, Alfred still hated it.

But what was the afterlife like, anyway? Was there one? Alfred couldn't fathom existing and he couldn't fathom not existing; he had spent the past several years warding off an existential breakdown. Was the afterlife going to be some sort of bar or other meeting place where he met all the people that he'd cared about and that cared about him? Alfred had always been afraid of death due to the possibility that he would spend an eternity with his abusers, that he would never escape them, but maybe he would get to just chill with people he cared about. Except, Alfred had grown attached to everyone that showed him kindness, and not one of these people still cared about him. He was just another face to his old teachers, he wasn't even a name to his old friends. Alfred would spend an eternity alone, just waiting for someone to remember him again, for someone to come see him. Unless the 'theists of major religions were right... or maybe the afterlife was nothing at all.

Alfred's phone pinged, ending the spiritual contemplation he usually avoided. And it was a good thing that it did, because he didn't like to think about things that he couldn't write, and he couldn't make himself write about serious things he had to form an opinion on for fear of focusing on himself and his own beliefs for more than two or three minutes at a time. So Alfred checked his phone and stopped thinking about religion, and the text he received was perfect for focusing on superficial issues that he had once considered himself above.

**R: Hey sorry for never responding. Happy new year**

Alfred's ex-girlfriend, Rita, occasionally texted him to let him know that her relationship was still going strong. They had stated that they would still be friends, and for a while this had worked out; after all,they had only been together for a bit more than a month, hardly a relationship at all. Alfred wasn't stupid; obviously he knew that Rita was only checking in on him to see if he had moved on yet. Usually during these interactions, Alfred wished he could be like her- not in a relationship, which Rita was. Rather, he wished he could be insecure in the sense that he felt the need to check on an ex's relationship status. Alfred was insecure enough to do this, but he was also beyond doing so; why be insecure about the relationship status of one's ex when one can just be insecure about all of the suffering they've went through and whether or not they deserved it and if they told anyone would that person think they deserved it, and wouldn't Alfred be weak if he told someone since it clearly signaled that he couldn't even handle his own life?

So Alfred went along. He always responded to Rita's texts because it made no difference to him and he knew that if he spent his insecurity points on normal shit, he would want the temporary satisfaction of a response, too. Instead Alfred spent his time feeling bad about things that had happened to him as a child, even though he wouldn't get temporary relief from thinking about it and even though nothing could provide temporary relief. But for Rita temporary relief was possible, and who was Alfred to deny her such a luxury, even if he made a fool of himself? What even was he, anyway? Surely he was nothing if not a people-pleaser, right? Please, he couldn't be anything other than a people-pleaser. Who was he? Why would he make something of himself when other people could make something of him, and probably a better thing as well? Who was he if not an extension of everyone he'd ever met? What was he if not the perception that others had of him? Hadn't he already missed the deadline for being an individual? Of course he did, so now he had to be a people-pleaser, right? That was right, wasn't it? Because surely if his suffering- or in this instance, perceived suffering- was enough to benefit another person, then it was worth it. Even if it wasn't martyrdom, even if the beneficiary was malicious, even if they only took and took and took.

**A: Salright. Happy new year.**

**R: Hru**

**A: Hella lit. What about you?**

**R: Amazing.**

**A: Nice, why's that?**

**R: I've been with my boyfriend for a year now**

Alfred had expected that, yeah. He began to text again: _I don't even live in Illinois anymore. It's been a year and a half, Rita, and we only dated for a month. Stop texting me ffs._

**A: nice**

**R: Yeah, why are you hella lit?**

Alfred stared at the water. Obviously he was not 'hella lit', but then, what defined 'hella lit'?

Rita hadn't known about Alfred's immense disdain for the body. It was only limited to his own, and Alfred had felt no need to tell her. And even if he had told her, Rita probably wouldn't have understood. So even if Alfred did tell her anything about his current situation, she wouldn't get it. After all, it wasn't a weight thing and it wasn't dissociation; Alfred wasn't normal, that was all. Why, would Alfred be so peeved about a blister? It was such a light injury. She wouldn't understand that it was more than that, that the blister was only the surface level of all the grievances Alfred had against life as they knew it. How self indulgent the body was, how insistent. The very nature of the human body was against everything that Alfred believed in; it was determined to survive, no matter what.

Alfred wasn't going to tell Rita, because that would be rude. She hadn't asked and they weren't together; they barely even knew each other.

**A: Yeah man I mean, it's just hella lit**

**R: Yeah but why**

**A: Life's Just great rn**

**R: Haha, nice. Any love life?**

Since dating Rita, Alfred had realized that he really could not handle a relationship. It simply wasn't doable; he couldn't imagine a healthy relationship, and he couldn't possibly contribute to one. The answer to the question was 'no', as it had been for around a year and a half.

**R: Lmao**

So that was pretty mean, especially given that Alfred hadn't responded yet.

**A: no, I've been a bit preoccupied with other things**

**R: Really? Like what?**

**A: Moving. I moved to nyc**

Rita didn't say anything after that. Alfred sighed and slipped his phone into his pocket. Now that he'd had the blister for a while, he didn't feel like killing himself, and he couldn't because Rita had texted him. It would be rather unfortunate if news spread back home and she thought it was her fault, because it had absolutely nothing to do with her.

Now that the decision not to kill himself was made, Alfred would stick to it. However, he had no money to go home and he had no one to pick him up. Alfred had no real way of getting home, and for a few minutes he considered vaulting himself over the edge anyway. But Kiku wouldn't really take kindly to his roommate committing suicide; Alfred was likely the only thing keeping him from monetary burdens. Kiku didn't deserve financial woes, Alfred decided; he would have to keep looking.

He eventually came across Francis's number, recalled the promise of a favor. He called Francis, quietly explained where he was and what it was that he needed, and hung up.

...

Another half an hour later, a car pulled up. The window of the passenger's seat rolled down and a voice said, "Alfred. Get in the front seat."

Alfred opened the door, noted that Francis and Arthur were quarreling in the backseat. The driver, though, looked almost exactly like him.

"Alfred! Are you alright?" Francis asked him, slurring his words. The car smelled heavily of alcohol.

Alfred nodded. This was as much as Francis needed; they didn't know each other, after all.

Alfred slipped into the passenger's seat, buckled his seat belt. His doppelgänger looked pretty sober, but it was better to be safe.

"Hi," he said, addressing the driver. He could think of nothing else to say.

"Hello," the driver replied. His voice was very soft; he could hardly be heard above Francis and Arthur. "I'm Matthew."

"Alfred," Alfred replied.

"Nice to meet you. Where's your apartment?"

"The nearest metro is fine."

"The metros aren't running tonight."

"I can walk from there." It was quite a far walk, but no matter. Alfred would not bother this random man any more than necessary.

Alfred surveyed the car in order to avoid talking. It was covered in Canadian flag stickers and other Canadian symbols, like hockey sticks and maple leaves. Hanging from the rear view mirror, instead of the typical cross or fuzzy die, was a small polar bear plush.

Alfred wondered what had led Matthew to live such a different life. What could have made him so passionate about Canada? Was he from there? Alfred was very passionate about Illinois, but he'd never bought Illinois stickers.

Did Matthew have a good life? Did that have anything to do with Canada?

Alfred wondered what it would have been like to be Matthew. Alfred wondered what it would have been like, to have an obsession with Canada instead of New York.

What hardships had Matthew suffered? Were any of them due to regional occurrences? Where had Matthew grown up? What did Matthew do for a living?

Did he have a nice family?

In a world where the physical form was usually the first impression, it seemed strange that Alfred and Matthew probably led completely different lives. It seemed strange that here, through a number of other chance encounters, they had briefly crossed paths.

"Well." Matthew pulled to a stop. "I brought you to the place you stopped the car at. It seems like you're from this area."

"How did you know that?"

"Francis and Arthur both talked about meeting you around here."

"Oh. Well, thank you. I'm sorry-,"

Francis lapsed into French, cursing at Arthur rather angrily.

"Oh, go fuck yourself. Just because someone had parents who were rich enough to send them abroad for university-," Arthur began.

"French is a beautiful language! You would understand if you weren't such an asshole!"

Matthew sighed. "They both had to sit in the back because they argued over who should get the front seat."

Alfred hadn't asked; it seemed Matthew just needed to get it off his chest.

"Oh," Alfred replied. "And you?"

"Someone needed to be the driver."

Perhaps Matthew's life was not so perfect. "I gotta go," Alfred said. "Sorry about making you drive around."

"It's okay. Sorry about the bridge."

Alfred smiled, wondered again what Matthew's life was like, what it would be like to be a different person.

But after that, the brief camaraderie felt by two people with an extremely similar physical appearance could only disappear. Alfred walked home, alone. He took his money and the note off the counter, put them on his desk, and promptly went to sleep.


	8. The Weight of Air

care.

"So yeah, I think I'm sick. I feel like sh-trash, bro."

"Really? How so?"

"I just don't feel good. I didn't even get up on time today." Alfred realized, of course, that this wasn't a very helpful description. He realized that Kiku probably enjoyed being alone in the morning, and also that Kiku probably didn't really care. Despite this, he continued, "I woke up feeling a little woozy. I just didn't want to wake up today." Alfred never wanted to wake up, ever, but this time he hadn't wanted to wake up for something so trivial as feeling physically ill.

While Alfred did feel woozy, it was an almost pleasant feeling. Finally he felt somewhat above this thing, as if the body did not weigh so heavily on his soul.

"Woozy," Kiku echoed. "Were you around anyone that was sick?"

"I don't think so. I haven't been outside since the New Year."

"Not once? It's been a few days."

"Not once."

"Not even for a walk?"

"Nope."

"Do you feel anything else?" Kiku asked him.

"I guess a bit nauseous."

Kiku sat at the table, bit into an apple. After he got about halfway through the apple he finally suggested that Alfred eat something.

Alfred ate a bowl of vegetables and it cured him of his ailment, but he almost wished it hadn't.

...

"Alfred! I have been waiting for the day we would cross paths again!" A man stopped him on the street, shook his hand excitedly.

"Really," Alfred replied. He returned the motion out of obligation. Alfred was rather limpwristed, all things considered, and the man noticed his supposed weakness.

"How did you stop that car?" The man asked. He tapped Alfred's arm as if to check that Alfred wasn't hiding a bulking mass or pure muscle underneath his jacket. "You don't look very strong." The man moved closer to him, much too close.

How unapologetic. Alfred could guess now that the car incident was what this was about, but then, how did the man know his name? "S'pose it was a miracle," he said shortly, moving away.

"You're religious?"

"I believe in miracles."

The man smiled at this; rather than kind, it seemed tolerant, as though Alfred had annoyed him somehow. "I'm Ivan Braginsky."

"Alfred Jones," Alfred replied.

"I know," Ivan replied. "I owe you a meal, yes?"

"No. Why?"

"For saving my life, of course!"

"How did I do that?"

"By stopping the car!"

And with that, Ivan pulled him into a nearby restaurant and told him to sit. Alfred obeyed, but he couldn't help thinking— what if he'd had something to do? Or simply hadn't wanted to eat? How astonishingly inconsiderate, for an act of thanks.

The waitress came quickly enough, and they ordered. Ivan ordered vodka— an interesting choice given the time of day— and something whose name slipped by Alfred. Alfred ordered a glass of water and an appetizer.

"You wanted an appetizer?"

"I'm not very hungry," Alfred replied. He turned to the waitress and asked if the appetizer could please be brought out at the same time as Ivan's meal. The waitress nodded and left.

"I have read much of your accomplishments," Ivan started. "They're plentiful, aren't they?"

"It depends on what you mean by 'accomplishment'."

"Your writing, of course!"

"Oh." It hadn't occurred to Alfred that, due to the nature of his career, so much of him was already on the internet. It hadn't occurred to him that anyone paid attention. "I've accomplished nothing with that."

"Art in itself is an accomplishment, yes? It is truly a gift, to be able to articulate— wouldn't you agree?"

Alfred decided that he disliked Ivan, if only for how he suggested answers. It was hard to say anything contradictory. "You could look at it that way if you wanted to. But I wouldn't consider most writing to be art. And definitely not mine."

"Is that so? I thought your work intriguing."

Alfred almost let himself become elated over the compliment. Instead he asked, "How did you know who I was?"

"When you stopped the car, I followed you because I wanted to thank you then and there." Ivan said this as though it was the most normal thing in the world. "But then, when Francis stopped you, you looked a bit annoyed by it. So I decided it would be best to wait."

"And you knew about my writing?" Alfred asked, neglecting to ask whether or not Ivan genuinely thought this was a better time.

"It was easy to figure it out, because of your writing. The websites you write for require... a bit much information. But I've been following your work for a long time; I quite enjoy it."

Well, there was nothing Alfred could do about it now except change the subject and hope nobody else thought to stop him on the street. "What do you do?" Alfred asked him. "How do you afford New York City?"

"I'm the Representative of this district."

Alfred looked away, attempted a quick recovery. "Oh." At one point Alfred had cared for and had written about politics, but these days he barely read the news. Alfred wondered if Ivan had read any of his earlier works, if he would still call pure political garbage 'art'.

The waitress came by again, with Ivan's vodka and Alfred's water. "You didn't want something else? No alcohol?" His tablemate asked.

"I don't drink."

They talked a bit more. Ivan had a habit of moving his hands around, almost unnaturally so. Communication. Articulation. Alfred was good at neither, but he imagined it was necessary as a politician.

Ivan once moved his hand too quickly and too close; he'd made no move whatsoever to hit Alfred, but Alfred flinched anyway. Ivan gave a small smile in response, one that was sympathetic to an almost pitying extent; he at least spared Alfred a comment, electing instead to stop moving his hands so dramatically.

Instead of making Alfred more comfortable, it only served to make him feel as though he was again at someone else's mercy, as if he was a child again. This probably wasn't intended— after all, Ivan knew little of Alfred's past— but Alfred was still a bit rattled by it.

Alfred's appetizer came before it was supposed to, because of course it did. So now Alfred had food and Ivan did not, and the only reasonable thing to do was wait. The situation was stifling, really, so Alfred began to fidget, mostly by cracking his knuckles. As usual, they didn't crack when he initially tried. So he applied more force. Every time he cracked his knuckles it hurt immensely and he was forced to wonder if he'd finally messed up and broken a finger; this was the case today as well. But Alfred continued until each of his fingers were screaming in this unwarranted agony.

Ivan's food eventually arrived, and finally Alfred took the time to look at his appetizer. He had ordered bread; it had been the cheapest appetizer on the menu, and was barely suitable for one person. While Alfred was once again starving and felt rather faint, he was more than pleased to see something so unsatisfactory. Another day of spite.

Alfred took a sip of water first, stared at the food in front of him. _All for someone that can't use a dishwasher_ , he thought, and suddenly it was almost hilarious. Alfred didn't deserve this. What had he done to save their lives? If it wasn't for things Alfred couldn't control— strength and instinct, mainly— they would both be dead. Alfred hadn't done anything, and really this was too much for him.

Ivan continued to speak. His maneuvers were childish, almost comically exaggerated. As a result, Ivan got his meaning over every time he spoke. Alfred, meanwhile, fumbled with the idea of understanding.

Ivan spoke as if Alfred had any idea who he was. Alfred was not who he had once been; yet, Ivan seemed to presume that he knew Alfred quite well, that Alfred's writing had betrayed the self. Alfred had never written anything too personal, and had not once written of his childhood. As far as Ivan was concerned, Alfred was just a regular person. Alfred felt a bit like a fraud; Ivan kept asking him questions that implied that Alfred had some sort of mystical process to writing. This was not the case. The right words just came out, and when they didn't come out Alfred thought of different, inferior words, and wrote those down instead. Then he would draft everything again, and usually during the second draft he would find better words. But if not, then he did a third draft. To Alfred it was nothing special, but Ivan still seemed interested.

Ivan acted as though he knew Alfred well, but he had a distinct way of making Alfred feel as though he ought to be what Ivan thought he was. He also had this air of importance, which was a frankly ridiculous act for one of New York's representatives, but somehow it still seemed to command respect.

After a while, Ivan lost interest. Alfred was not what he was supposed to be; this was an unforgivable sin most of the time, even if writers were rarely what others perceived them to be. Soon it became clear that Ivan was maintaining an air of interest only because Alfred was a constituent. Alfred decided then that it was time to leave; there was absolutely no reason to stay. He hadn't even wanted to eat.

Alfred finished his bread, stood up. It was awkward to leave now, but it would be more awkward to stay as Ivan finished his food. "Well, bye then," he said. "I— I have something to attend to."

Ivan grabbed his arm, thanked him again. Ivan smiled in the way only politicians and car salesmen smiled, and the only appropriate response Alfred could manage was a nod. Alfred pulled his arm away and left, as quickly as he could, and after that he just went home.

* * *

Looking in the mirror, Alfred had this 'icky' feeling, to put it simply. His collarbone seemed especially prominent now, the way the two protrusions were lined up. His hands seemed strange, somehow, in the incomplete flexibility of their movement, in the way the skin on the back of his hand was dry, in the way that his skin stretched over his bones with ease; it looked like it should have been painful. It was abhorrent.

All this distracted from the main attraction, which was of course Alfred's face. The only other noticeable things about Alfred's body were the burn marks on his legs ("She'll stop if she's disgusted with me" became "Why shouldn't I hurt myself if other people can?", which promptly resulted in an addiction), but he didn't think about those anymore. His face was the truly remarkable thing at the moment. His face— Alfred knew, logically, that it was in fact his face— felt off, somehow. Alfred couldn't recognize his face. He could point out all of the features that would make up his face and they were all there, but it just didn't seem right somehow. Nothing had changed and Alfred knew this. _If it's not your face, whose face is it then, dipshit?_ Alfred's extraordinarily mean inner monologue had a good point this time, so he didn't bother to correct it.

All Alfred could really think was how disgusting it was that even he could not see anything other than a physical form in his place, how obvious it was that it wasn't him, and then he went back to what he typically did: loathing it.

Alfred hated the human body these days, the way the framework— both bones and blood— could be seen through the finished product like an overdone trope. It had disgusted him when he was still starving and, even though his rib cage was only somewhat visible instead of extremely visible now, it disgusted him again. It felt unnatural, as if his mere existence was a sin and he was condemned by this form and nothing else.

When Alfred was in the sixth grade, his science teacher had said that air could easily crush pretty much anything with its weight. Everything existed preadjusted to this weight, and thus able to survive. Alfred wasn't sure if that was actually true or not (his science teacher had been a bit eccentric), but air did have weight, and nobody ever noticed it.

The human body easily had to be the largest burden a human being could carry, even despite some of the things it ignored: heartbeats and the weight of air, to name a few. And yet everyone was preadjusted to it. Everyone, it seemed, except him.

...

So Alfred's shower was really cool and everything, and when he was done he returned to his room. But he didn't feel good there like he usually did; actually, he felt entirely unsafe. Alfred had this feeling a lot as a kid, but he lived in an apartment away from his parents now, away from everyone that would've hurt him, really. Kiku didn't want to hurt Alfred because Kiku didn't know who Alfred was. This lack of safety was completely irrational, so Alfred just changed into some more comfortable clothing and climbed into bed.

What Alfred really needed was a motel room: crisp white sheets and a shitty old kettle to make instant coffee. A window that overlooked somewhere that wasn't too familiar. Alfred needed one night in a motel room, and he could figure out the rest of his life from the safety of unfamiliarity. The next best place to go was anywhere away from the room crammed with all his things. Alfred didn't really care where he went, but only naturally he ended up in the common area. Kiku was sitting on the couch, reading a book.

Alfred sat down next to Kiku and tried to act normal, but he didn't feel safe here either. Alfred could only now realize what the problem was: he was stuck with himself. His skin was suddenly too tight, his fingers hot and seemingly numb from warmth— Alfred's hands were never warm and this felt wrong. Energy, or just discomfort, seemed to build up in his joints. His body wasn't even the problem in the end; he was more uncomfortable with the concept of being himself at all. How was he supposed to live with the guilt and the shame of being alive?

"Alfred, are you okay?" Kiku tapped him on the shoulder.

Alfred jumped, and quickly hid his face in embarrassment. "I'm fine."

Kiku didn't say anything for a minute or two. Finally, "You seem upset."

What an observation. Alfred opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out; he just shook his head instead. "I just don't feel like being in my room," Alfred managed. He'd thought he could just walk out here, in his extreme emotional distress, and not bother his roommate. He'd been wrong about that.

"Why not?"

"I don't know." Alfred hugged himself and tried not to think too hard about how a loving God would not allow him to only feel comfort in something he hated. "I don't know."

"Is there anything I can do?"

How different their issues were. What a monumental mockery of human interaction. What a mountain between Alfred and everyone else.

Kiku was offering to help him. Saying 'no' would be rude, wouldn't it? Or were those just regular boundaries? Wouldn't Kiku want to know that Alfred was alright? What if Kiku didn't leave him alone?... Kiku wasn't that sort of person, but still. Didn't Kiku have the right to know, since Alfred had dared to be in his company while distressed?

Alfred thought of a task, of one that would make Kiku feel like he was helping. "Will you go on a walk with me?"

...

Ten minutes later they were outside, going on a walk. It was hard to believe Alfred had ever felt bad in his life before; the weather was preferable and he felt better outside.

They didn't speak for about a mile of the walk. Alfred was starting to think they should turn around; he wasn't going to force Kiku to walk as much as he forced himself to walk.

Alfred felt he owed Kiku an explanation, however brief, of why they were taking a walk together. He started to think of what he could possibly say to Kiku, who probably hadn't done anything terrible in his life and probably wasn't particularly selfish. If one just went by association, Alfred was godawful. If one went by the individual, they'd find Alfred physically repulsive from a sheer amount of loathing. But only Alfred knew enough to be repulsed, and he wanted to keep it that way.

Still, Alfred would need to explain why he was this lousy individual to explain why Kiku had to take a walk with him. Alfred began to assemble sentences, connected paragraphs and pages— if only human suffering was brief; if only betrayal didn't cast such an ugly shadow. "Kiku," he began. "Kiku, I-," and his breath caught in his throat. "I'm sorry that you're taking a walk with me." How unlike him, to apologize for something like this. Perhaps it was warranted, if not to Kiku then to all the people he'd manipulated. Survival wouldn't excuse the suffering he'd inflicted on others. The people around him had been empathetic and he had been a parasite.

Kiku didn't respond to his apology. The burden of initiating human interaction was always finding something worthwhile to say.

Alfred discarded the mental rough draft. He could only reasonably put The Incident into words; everything else was too shameful, or too unbearable in some other aspect. Alfred could handle others knowing what a horrible person he was, but he couldn't fathom anyone knowing about the things that had been out of his control. Sure, this was still oversharing, but Kiku was taking a walk with him and thus probably wanted to know why Alfred was such a traumatized piece of shit, and what did Alfred ever give people except what they wanted? What would burden Kiku more, that was the real question; was not knowing worse than knowing, just due to the nature of what Alfred was upset about?

Even if Kiku was owed an explanation, it was too late to say anything at all. Alfred had remembered something vital about Kiku, another mountain. "Kiku, what do you think about cats? Like, the animals."

"Cats are great." Another few paces and then, "What do you think of cats?"

"Yeah. Cats are the best, dude. Cats are awesome."


	9. Personal Disburdenment at the Chicago O’Hare International Airport

_Fuck the fucking O'Hare International Airport, and fuck Chicago_ , Alfred thought, though he often prided himself over being a linguistically clean man.

Alfred's mother had appendicitis, and because Alfred had not been home for a few months, he was expected to show up and be supportive. This wasn't Chicago's fault, and it wasn't O'Hare's fault either, but Alfred was still upset with them, however irrationally. The only lucky thing, and really this was more of an inconvenience given his situation, was that he was traveling domestically.

Alfred stood a ways away from the crowd and watched a man yell at a United agent. To the right a couple bursted into an extremely loud argument. Alfred enjoyed the O'Hare International Airport more and more every time he came here, if only because going 'home' was much worse.

The luggage did come, because good things never lasted.

...

Alfred's father was telling him how, politically, Alfred was wrong. "You're just so brainwashed," he said. "How do you still not get it?"

For the past several years, Alfred's father had tormented him with politics every time they crossed paths. "I'm just trying to help you. You'll get scammed thousands of dollars. Hell, you'll get scammed of your life savings if you can't see such easy shit," his father continued, as he often did. "So what do you think about what happened?"

Whether or not Alfred was already being scammed was debatable. "I'm having a great day, thanks," Alfred replied. He didn't want to talk about politics, nor had he ever (aside from this weird phase he'd went into at thirteen).

Alfred thumbed a copy of Kafka's Letter to His Father. Usually he longed for the forgiveness good ol' FK exhibited. At other times, usually while actually talking to his parents, he was blessed with righteous anger. How ironic, given that spite was damning.

"You never answer the question properly. You hate hearing the truth. All you ever read about is politics; surely you can form an opinion. Surely they already told you what to believe."

Alfred didn't respond. He didn't have to anymore.

* * *

Alfred's mother was alive and the surgery went well, which was great. Alfred wasn't too familiar with any medical terminology, in the slightest; the most he knew was that the appendix was known as a ticking time bomb if anything at all, once useful and now abandoned by the change of the times. It did have a purpose in the present day, but that didn't change its reputation.

Still, Alfred sat like the good, obedient boy he was. His father was getting snacks from the vending machine downstairs, which wasn't at all necessary.

"How's New York City?" His mother asked.

"It's great. I love it there."

"It's not at all like Illinois, is it?"

"Maybe not our town."

"Do you think you'll come home soon? You know, you can't just live for location forever," his mother said.

"I don't know if I'm going to move back to Illinois."

"Oh. Well, that's okay. It's just... New York City is so dangerous. Move somewhere nice, like Denver at most. Or a little town. One day you're going to be too old to pay for location, Alfred. I don't want you to be unhappy."

"Yeah. I guess I will move one day. But not yet."

...

On the way home, his father continued to rant about politics. Alfred didn't respond, much to his father's chagrin.

Home was strangely distant, given how long Alfred had lived here. There were more pictures on the walls now, more dust on the furniture. The house was generally clean, but it was somewhat less put together than before. It was worn-out.

"Your mother's been really upset since you left," his father said. "I hope it was worth it, to leave so soon. Why did you even bother? Everything was perfect, Alfred, and then you fucked off to New York City."

Alfred wasn't prepared for such a conversation; he was never prepared for his father's words. Always, they were unwanted.

"But this was planned. You're not impulsive; you waited until you got your Associate's degree. Why didn't you wait until you got a Bachelor's? What made you so anxious to leave? You had every opportunity to get a good start, Alfred. All the opportunities that your mother and I never got. And you threw it away for fucking New York. I want to understand you, Alfred. Really, I do."

"I just wanted to have the same experience other kids have," Alfred said, which was only partly true.

"So you wanted to struggle?"

"Yes."

His father didn't accept this as an answer, but Alfred continued up the stairs anyway.

At the top of the stairs, there was a stain from the chemicals he'd used to try to clean the cat urine; he'd been fourteen, inexperienced with cleaning, and the stain was still left over from his inexperience. It made Alfred happy to see it now; he hated this house.

The first thing Alfred did was take a shower. He stared at the tub as he waited for the water to turn hot. The first time Alfred had tried to kill himself, he hadn't even gotten close. He hadn't panicked much about it, either; he had just laid in the shower, in the dark, and after an hour he was a little woozy but hadn't died. After that he'd patched himself up and went about his day. He hadn't been able to feel it, which made it easier to ignore, especially given that he was already in a dark, hot room. The second time, on the other hand...

Alfred turned off the lights once the water was hot, climbed into the shower, and tried not to think about it too much.

...

The sheets were clean, and Alfred's old room no longer smelled of ammonia. All Alfred really remembered from this room was sleeping on the floor, cold, and wondering if he was unlucky enough to eventually go blind from exposure. Thankfully he'd gotten off rather easily in terms of side effects, with only the frequent headaches and the occasional bout of illness.

Alfred couldn't sleep. This bed was very comfortable when it was clean, but the room felt so heavy. He wasn't strong enough to keep such weight from crushing him.

...

Twenty five minutes later Alfred was at a McDonald's. He'd climbed through the window and walked all the way, just as he'd done when he was little.

Alfred bought a sundae and fries and sat down.

"Yo, Alfred! What's up, man? It's been a minute, hasn't it?" The cashier's vapid stupor suddenly disappeared, cracking into a grin.

"Hey. Yeah, it sure has."

Alfred's old tormentor, James, beamed at him. "It's been a while. I've had some time to think. I'm really sorry about the sandwich. And everything else."

"Don't worry about it. We were kids." During their sophomore year of high school, James had knocked a sandwich out of Alfred's hand; this was the last action in a line of slight aggressions between them. They had gotten into a fight over this sandwich, and Alfred had promptly taken the blame. He hadn't wanted to explain to his parents how he'd gotten the sandwich, as he'd begged for it in the cafeteria. James left him alone after that.

"You work at this McDonald's now?" Alfred asked him.

"Yeah. I took your spot, actually. Where did you go after you left? You were here a while, yeah?"

"Four years. And I went to New York."

"Oh, cool. How's that going?"

"Very well."

James was the same age as him. All Alfred's old friends were in college, the military, or trade school, and it had only been a few months since he'd seen all of them. And yet so much separated him from Illinois; each day of freedom may as well have been a year. Alfred was much more comfortable now; he was almost a functioning individual again, but given his track record with Illinoisians, Alfred wasn't sure if they would like that.

Alfred finished his sundae and fries and went back home, unwilling to continue the conversation any further.

* * *

_November 23, 2016_

_I was at my girlfriend's house about two hours ago. Everything was going great, you know, because we were playing Tetris and I'm a fucking god at Tetris._

_So it was my turn at Tetris and she turns to me and asks do I want to have sex. And I say, "No, I think I'm good."_

_She says, "Come on. It'll be fun. It's just sex, not like it's really all that important."_

_"I would rather just play Tetris and hang out. Look, I'm doing pretty good right now." That sounds pretty lame and all, but doing well at Tetris was an easy few moments of time because I didn't have to look at her._

_"What the hell is wrong with you? I mean, come on, what teenager doesn't want to have sex? Why wouldn't you want to? You never struck me as such a prude before."_

_And I, who spent my entire summer reading every article and social media post I could find on abuse, was well equipped to respond, "Coercion isn't gonna work. I said no."_

_"But you won't give me a reason."_

_"I just don't want to."_

_Finally she says what she means to say, which is, "I'm going to report your family if you don't have sex with me tonight."_

_I pause Tetris, which is really unfortunate because I was doing really great, and I look her in the eye. "Bullshit."_

_"I will. I'll fucking do it. That's what a responsible person would do, anyway." I don't say anything and she puts her hand against my leg, and I tell her to get fucked. She immediately grabs her phone, dials the hotline, and shows her phone to me. "Well?" She asks._

_In all the articles I read, they don't tell you what to say when you're being blackmailed or generally threatened. It's a rather subjective thing, I guess._

_"Fine."_

_What do you do when people don't take 'no' for an answer? When you said everything you were supposed to say and it didn't work? What do you do when someone just doesn't care about how you feel in a situation like this?_

_So I took my time because I really didn't want to, and though I don't think God really cares about me I still prayed for a miracle to happen in which I didn't have to do this. I went really slow with "preparing", insisted on turning on the radio and muting Tetris, and then took a few seconds to hesitate before turning it off. I turned off the ceiling light and had a breath mint and turned on the lamp; I drank some water and complimented her, said she was very attractive even though I've never been more repulsed by another person before, not even myself. I couldn't force myself to move any faster, and she snapped at me to hurry up and I didn't, so she hit me instead. And I know I could have rightfully hit her back, but there was no actual choice. I wasn't even in my own fucking house, and I was being threatened with CPS investigations and if I hit her she would probably tell her parents and her parents would insist on meeting mine, and then what? My parents beat the shit out of me? I get charged with something?_

_I sort of just hovered next to her, since she was on the bed. Eventually she got impatient and stood, and she kept reaching to unzip my jacket and I couldn't make myself sit there and let her do it, so I sort of backed into a corner. And when I couldn't go away anymore I just thought, why am I doing this? Why am I going along with this? Why do I even want to stay with my family? And then I thought about Tetris, and how I really love Tetris and how I wish we were still just playing Tetris, or that I hadn't even gone at all, but why would I not leap at the chance to have dinner at my girlfriend's house? Dinner could only be a thawed hash brown or a piece of toast otherwise, right? I think now I'd rather starve than ever see her again, but you never think someone's going to assault you when a moment ago you were just playing Tetris. Anyway she got my jacket off and pulled me toward the bed, onto her._

_Then I had to touch her, to try to take her blouse off because she insisted, but I was fumbling with the buttons. I was trembling so badly that I just couldn't do it. And I thought, how horrible. How disgusting. Out of all the shit that's happened, have I ever experienced anything worse? It was terrible that she knew I had no choice and was forcing me to do this, and that she knew she could hit me because I had no one to tell, and that she knew she was going to get away with this no matter what. That we both shared this information and she was taking advantage of the fact that I knew it, too, that I was helpless to anything she wanted to do, and that this person that I trusted was taking advantage of the fact that I had abusive parents, and of me. But mostly I thought about how I should've just went along initially, because if I had my head wouldn't be reeling from how she hit me, and why was this the one time in recent history that I hadn't thought of ways to minimize the damage? I knew that it was easier to give in than to keep dignity, but I guess I didn't learn my fucking lesson all the times my parents hit me. But at the very least it has to be my fault she hit me, because I should be used to this by now. I should know how to avoid this.How the fuck could I be so stupid— a fourteen year old and a seventeen year old, really? Why the hell would a seventeen year old ever want to date a fourteen year old without ill intent?_

_After seeing my failure with the buttons, she insisted I kiss her. I ignored her, which was a bad choice because in response she grabbed my hair and pulled me toward her. She had a pretty firm fistful of my hair and it really hurt for a minute until she loosened her grip, and then she was all over me, and I couldn't do anything about it._

_I pulled away from her, thought of a second excuse, a better one. She asked why and was so forceful about it that I couldn't really raise my voice, so I just mumbled about a condom. In response she hit me again, and I decided I was going to kill myself if I got her pregnant and that was great and all. I guess she was getting impatient because a couple seconds after hitting me, she was on top of me and I was the one laying on the bed. I don't remember how she did it, but I assume it was fast. I didn't know what I was supposed to do except continue to unbutton her blouse, so I kept trying with that, but then she forced me to kiss her again and I started panicking. I'm of course an expert at self control, so I didn't dart up or anything, and I managed to not say anything either because I really don't want to go to foster care, or have to deal with not going to foster care after a few CPS investigations. I wanted her to stop, obviously, but she didn't care. I wasn't even second place in this situation; I was nothing at all, not to her. But when have I ever been anything to anybody?_

_She was still all over me and I still didn't want to touch her, so I stopped trying to unbutton her blouse and just put my hands at my sides, tried to melt into the sheets. But she slammed her palm against my head and urged me to continue._

_At the exact moment I got the second button undone, her father knocked on the door, and I sat up and tried to get away from her. Her father said it was time for dinner, so we went and ate, and I wasn't hungry but that was what I came to her house for, right? During dinner she chatted a lot about tutoring. What a horrible lie, and one that I came up with just to be able to see her._

_Never have I been more eager to return to my cat-piss soaked bed and my abusive parents. She told me, "If you tell anyone or break up with me, you know what'll happen." Because the threat was to call the police on my parents, if I told anyone she wouldn't be able to fulfill it. But she knows I wouldn't tell anyone anyway; I can't do anything that would lead to my parents getting notified. And anyway, if I did tell anyone, I wouldn't be able to include the part about my parents, so I would have to lie if I told anyone, and lying isn't a very good way to get somebody in legal trouble, even if she did try to assault me. Even if she does in the future. I'm fucking screwed._

_There's not one goddamn rope in this entire fucking house. And I didn't even want to write this because I don't want to remember, but I tried to tell my mother about it and she just put her headphones on. I don't have anyone else to tell._

His father and he went to the hospital around noon to take his mother home. Apparently a few of the day nurses were on their lunch break, because a nurse called out, "Alfred!" and ran up to him.

"April," Alfred acknowledged. April threw her arms around him; Alfred flinched violently, but could not back away. His father just stared at him; Alfred told him to go on ahead, and he would get a ride home. And soon it was just April and Alfred and a ton of strangers in the hospital lobby.

"It's been so long," April continued. She seemed glad to see him. "We should totally catch up."

"I had no idea you wanted to become a nurse," Alfred said. Why the fuck had she wanted to become a nurse? Why hadn't he reported her, or called a hotline or something? What were the chances that she was hurting other people now?

"I decided not to go into journalism. What do you do? And where have you been? Nobody's seen you around; you just up and left." April grabbed his wrist.

"I moved away." Alfred stared down at his wrist, where she was touching him. Alfred had never, not once, wanted to see April ever again. And now she was touching him, again, and she wasn't threatening him or forcing him to do things he didn't want to do right now but Alfred still felt like he was being crushed, like all of the wind had been knocked out of him and quite like he would have to kill himself when he got home. "I got a political science degree and I moved away."

"Really? Where to?"

"New York City." Eight million people. Alfred was just one of eight million people, and when he went back to his apartment nobody would be able to find him.

"Wow! What are you doing that lets you live there?"

"Writing articles, and a bit of freelance writing on the side."

"You're kidding." April smacked his arm with the back of her hand rather playfully. "You're kidding! There's no way."

It occurred to Alfred that this was a normal conversation. This conversation could have happened between any two people, and right now they just looked normal. Two regular people. April was so normal. That wasn't fair.

"We should get a coffee, catch up," April suggested.

The third or fourth last thing Alfred would ever want to do with April was get coffee, but he felt, rather irrationally, that something bad would happen if he didn't. So he went.

...

Alfred was rather nervous. Except, he thought, nervousness wasn't the name of the pit in his stomach, or the strange hot, the painful warmth, that snaked its way across Alfred's chest. Hot flashes, pure mockery in a world where it was so easy to be cold. This was worse.

He continued walking, trailing slightly behind her. As they kept walking the feeling got worse, and more familiar; he had always felt so awful when he was going to see her, or when he thought of her at all. He tried to tell himself that it was okay, that nothing was going to happen because he was an adult now and he didn't want anything bad to happen. But as a child he hadn't had the choice, and that thought only made everything worse.

Alfred ordered a coffee; his voice came out so clear, so disconnected from how he felt. April ordered a sandwich and hot chocolate. They got their things and sat down.

April sat across from him. "Hey, you're not still caught up on what happened between us, are you? We were kids."

"I'm not _caught up_ , and it's not what happened between us; it's what you did to me. I was a freshman. I was—," Alfred stopped. He always repeated this exact reasoning to himself— that it wasn't his fault, that "I was fourteen. You were able to legally consent. I couldn't." It hurt to say it now, to say it to another person. Alfred hadn't ever told anyone what had happened, after all; April was the only one that knew.

"Ah, come on. Loosen up, Alfred. It couldn't have been that bad. You must've enjoyed it; you orgasmed, didn't you? It's not like I raped you."

Alfred hated that she was right— not that he enjoyed it, but that she hadn't raped him, legally speaking. But more importantly he hated that April would dare to comment on him in such a graphic manner, that she wouldn't be as delicate as he was when talking about what happened. What an ugly justification for what she'd done. "I didn't enjoy it, but it wouldn't matter if I did. I was a fourteen year old, and you threatened me."

April appeared rather dejected at this. She unwrapped her sandwich, bit into it. Alfred hadn't touched his coffee yet; he didn't want to drink in front of her. He just felt so vulnerable again, as if everything he could possibly do was benefiting her in some way, and he didn't want that. "You know, it really hurts that you see me that way. I mean— I understand that you probably hate me, but you can't have possibly thought that I would actually follow through. Not many people would use someone's home life against them."

"So you wouldn't have called the hotline on me if I refused you, or if I broke up with you?" Alfred asked her.

"Of course not, Alfred."

As if Alfred could have known not to take such a threat seriously, especially on the days when she actually did enter the hotline's number.

They sat without speaking. Alfred made himself start on his coffee while it was still warm. He tried to think about other things, but mainly it circled back to how Alfred didn't want her to see him, any part of him, at all.

"You must be really smart, to make it in New York City as a writer. You should show me some of your articles. I bet they're awesome," April commented.

But Alfred didn't want to talk about his articles, or New York City, or anything new. A million questions bubbled in his throat; most weren't actually addressed to April, but those that were burned. One rose above the others: "How did you feel when you made me do those things?"

"Sorry, what?"

"How did you— how did you feel when you made me have sex with you? I always wondered. I want to understand why you made me do it. I want an explanation."

"Oh, I... I don't know. I guess I just wanted it, and I felt— I felt insecure, since you didn't seem to want me. So I pretended you did."

This definitely was not the answer Alfred had expected, and it was almost infuriating. Did he really not deserve a better answer than this? Was this really the best she could come up with? What was she not saying? Alfred saw red and did nothing to stop his anger; after years of feeling an extreme disconnect with his body, he had no idea that he could become so protective over it. All this human suffering, a whole lifetime of it, was fine to his abuser because Alfred had turned her down. Because to her, his choice hadn't mattered.

His whole body seemed to break in that moment. He let out a huge sigh, until there was no air left inside him, and resisted the urge to slump; still, Alfred felt like there was this huge weight pressing him into the ground. He thought— he couldn't think anything, he was fucking enraged. How could anyone do something like that to another person and then make excuses for it? Breathing was too hard; surely it would be less exhausting to suffocate, but he forced air into his lungs anyway. Suddenly they seemed too large for his ribs, and he wondered why the body had to react when hearing something shocking. How easy life should be if not so.

But more so, a different question lingered: how could anything ever explain why things like this happened? What answer did Alfred want— what answer could possibly justify all of this, could explain away all the trauma and the guilt and the past? Some manipulations could be seen as necessary, but no matter what, sexual assault was not one of them.

"I got angry when you didn't want me. I thought, boys always want sex— what's wrong with me? High school was really tough; I was getting bullied by other people in my grade. I'm sure you understand," April continued.

"What, you want me to empathize with you? I had a horrible year, too. Every year was horrible. Hell, you knew that and you took advantage of it. How do you live with what you did? You forced me, and I felt-," he paused, searched for the right words. He couldn't speak, so he took a sip of coffee instead. Once, it had tasted like humanity. Now it just seemed bitter.

"Well... How did you feel?" April prompted.

Alfred imagined himself popping like a blister, sending filthy impurity everywhere. "I-I didn't feel like it was sexual at all. I was repulsed by you. I wanted someone that cared about me, and that I could care about without feeling horrible, and you took advantage of that. You took advantage of the fact that I had no friends, no real family, nowhere to go and nobody to turn to. You took advantage of my fear of foster care. You took advantage of the fact that my family was incredibly abusive. And you have the fucking nerve to say that you only did it because you felt insecure? You listened and you knew exactly what to say to make me feel like there were no other options. I mean, come on. I always thought you had to have planned it, or something, that you had to have had it in mind the whole time, because it was so perfect. You took everything I told you, and you turned it against me. You knew I couldn't risk doubting your threats. You knew everything. Don't fucking say that I hurt you because I didn't want to have sex with you, that I made you insecure and that's why you did it. You went after a neglected fourteen year old. We didn't know each other before you started sitting with me. I thought you must've had this elaborate plan to sleep with me. I'm not convinced you didn't."

"That's ridiculous. I understand you're upset, Alfred, but I'm not a sexual predator. What other ways did I ruin your life, though? Pray tell."

Alfred was incredibly overwhelmed. Every emotion he could have possibly felt about the situation came out. How dare she mock him? Why couldn't she just listen? Why did Alfred come here at all? But he pressed forward. "Whenever it happened I got the sense that I wasn't a human being because of what was happening to me, because of how demeaning it was. After it I would always feel like I would never get better, that I was only ever going to be what other people did to me. I-I remember panicking sometimes, just not being able to breathe, and you wouldn't stop. And I remember feeling like I didn't matter at all, like the entire situation was just you and a body and I wasn't a part of it. All of it was just what you wanted, and in those moments that was all I was for. I felt like I couldn't escape it, like it defined me, or that I wasn't ever going to be anything more than that. Before that I'd always thought that when you chose the people you wanted in your life, things couldn't go wrong. I remember wondering if I was the problem, if so many people doing horrible things to me meant that I brought it on myself somehow. I felt that my entire life could be summarized by what you made me do, that I wasn't good for anything else, that I wasn't my own person anymore." It was pointless to say this, and Alfred knew that. He found it more pathetic than anything. But if nothing else he still had faith that she could understand, or that she would feel remorse for what she did.

Alfred paused, took a sip of his coffee. April didn't respond. He kept going: "For years I wondered how nobody ever saw what I was. What you did was all consuming. I didn't understand that people really couldn't tell that anything had happened to me, because I spent so much time thinking about it. If you had asked me to describe myself back then, honestly, I wouldn't have said 'smart' or 'realistic' or anything like that. I would have said 'traumatized'. It felt like all I was, and I felt like everyone else could see that."

"And what would you say now?"

Alfred thought on it for a moment; was his answer really all that different? Now he didn't think about April; he thought about everything else and pushed her completely out of his head, but it still had the same result. Some days were really good, regular days, and others he felt like he would never be equal to his peers, like he wasn't a person anymore. The good days never lasted long enough. "I would say I'm a survivalist."

April rolled her eyes. "And what else do you have to say? What else happened as a result of this?"

He wanted to speak. Really, he did. There was so much to say, namely how unfair everything was. How could she live with herself, with what she'd done, when he had tried to kill himself twice over it? Why didn't she feel guilty, and why did he feel guilty? Alfred hadn't even done anything wrong! Why did April take advantage of him, really? Why hadn't his mother listened? Why did so much random, everyday stuff have to remind him of what she'd done? Alfred couldn't speak; for once he knew exactly what he wanted to say, and it wouldn't come out.

Instead he pulled out the passage from November of 2016, copied it, and pasted it onto his notes app. He already knew what it said; on paper, the handwriting had been frantic and slanted. He had tried his best to get every emotion down and in doing so had significantly reduced the quality, and typing it had made no difference.

April was unimpressed. Alfred was aware that he'd sucked at writing as a fourteen year old, but he wanted her to understand. "Man, you really are one of those New York types. I'm sure you're a great writer these days; you're dramatic as all hell. I get that what I did to you was bad, and I am sorry. But get real— don't you think you're overreacting?"

"You threatened me into sex. You hit me whenever I didn't do exactly what you wanted while we were having sex. I'm not overreacting."

April sighed. "Yes, you are, because I didn't rape you. You're just being dramatic. You could have stopped me if you wanted to, but you didn't want to, did you? You didn't want it to stop."

"I didn't want what you did to me. And I-I tried so hard to make it stop."

"I wasn't saying you wanted sex. But I know you, and I knew you well then. You can't deny that. If you really did feel you weren't good for anything else, then you needed me. You love to suffer. It's validating, isn't it?"

But that wasn't true, of course it wasn't. Alfred had hated what was happening, and he'd tried to escape. Right? Or could he have done something, and he decided against it? Alfred couldn't remember anymore; he only had his writing to go off these days. "You threatened me. Of course I didn't want it," Alfred reiterated.

"And what did I threaten you with? Helping you get away from your abusive parents? I get that what I did was wrong, and I get that you're upset, Alfred, but I don't think you're being completely honest with yourself here. If you were, maybe you wouldn't be so traumatized. Do you ever take a step back to ask yourself why you're always the victim, all the time? You've always been like this. I can't believe that you really need your _rapist_ to tell you that you're not just a victim. I mean, I didn't even rape you. I'm a woman, you're a man. You could have forced me off if you'd wanted to. I couldn't have pinned you down."

"I never said I was just a victim."

April scoffed at him. "As if you could think of a time where you've ever been anything else. I've met plenty of people like you. You're always going to be the victim, and nothing is ever going to change that."

With that April gave him fifteen in cash and left. Alfred finished his coffee, now cold, and prayed that he never had to see her again. He forgot to buy a coffee for his father.

...

Alfred was pretty sure Illinois had done away with their statute for certain sexual offenses, which meant he could still report it and have it mean something. And since he'd been three years too young to consent, maybe she wouldn't get only a slap on the wrist. But he hadn't read of any similar cases and he didn't know how to go about all of this, and going through the motions sounded exhausting.

What had happened wasn't Alfred's fault, and he didn't frequently entertain the idea that it was. He still tried to treat himself like a person, and a person wouldn't be at fault for the things done against their will. Alfred knew this, and he knew it wasn't his fault, but he was still ashamed over it— and he was ashamed over being ashamed because of how many articles he'd read telling him it wasn't his fault, because just by being ashamed he felt he was breaking his rule. He still didn't want anyone to know, although the only way he could afford to come back here again was if he got help from his parents. He didn't want to discuss it with anyone, and have more people in the world know about what had happened.

Alfred wished he could have run into someone nicer, like Rita, or almost any other Illinoisian he knew. Or better yet, nobody he knew at all. Not his first girlfriend, who he'd never actually broken up with. (When she finished high school, Alfred never saw her again; it was fine with him now, but at the time he had been rather paranoid.) But no, it had to be April.

Best not to think about it, right? Alfred couldn't just not think about it; he thought about the year she took from him at least once or twice a day, but never in words, just in pure panic or distress or shame. Alfred was a master at ignoring that which he couldn't change, or at least normalizing it in his mind. So he would do that now.

Alfred thought, instead, about the stuffed animals in this section of the store. At five-thirty in the evening he had decided he wanted one, and now he was at a store, browsing them. He finally decided on a blue dinosaur; it was simple, a uniform light blue, and he liked it very much. So he bought it and climbed back into the car, and why was he doing this?

Why was he buying a stuffed animal? Everything childish had become too connected to sex and trauma. When Alfred was a younger teenager, he'd spent much of his time trying to feel like a little kid again, one that had clean bedding and hadn't ever been forced to do anything inappropriate. He'd been safe as a child. So why was he buying a stuffed animal now, if he only thought of childish things as a grab for safety? Why was he mocking himself?

And why the fuck had he picked blue, of all colors? Green was obviously better.

Alfred put the dinosaur in the passenger seat of his father's old truck, started driving. He'd never been in the habit of naming stuffed animals, but he decided this one would be called 'Chicago'... if he could remember that, which he definitely wouldn't.

When he got back to his old room, he laid there with Chicago in his arms. It didn't feel right anymore. Alfred was used to sleeping while hugging a pillow, but this was strange to him. This felt bad, uncomfortable. Sleeping in this particular bed was uncomfortable, too. Everything here was horrible. Alfred had been such a nationalist as a child, but why had he ever loved Illinois? He had fantasized about it saving him, but in the end it couldn't. Not even Chicago could do that— both the stuffed animal and the city, all the people that had seen Alfred and looked the other way. This state wasn't the hero Alfred remembered it being. This state had failed him.

Chicago was, in the end, inanimate. For just a while Alfred had loved it, but now it only seemed to mock him: _Save yourself. Save yourself._

* * *

Alfred loved the O'Hare International Airport; it was still better than home, which meant that every time he came here he had a moment to appreciate it. It was, perhaps, the only building in all of Illinois that he'd been to without getting hurt at least once. Even in grocery stores he'd tripped, or been shoved, or ran into things— particularly as a young child. The O'Hare International Airport, in all its dysfunctional glory, was safe, and safety meant everything.

Alfred was starting to get to the point where he took it for granted, where he was comfortable, but when he was younger general safety had meant much more to him.

But also, the O'Hare Airport meant that, half the time, he was staying in Illinois a bit longer. Did Alfred actually have any good memories in this state? How had he ever loved a place so full of suffering?

He still loved Illinois, but it was so much weight. Chicago and his own town were filled with pain, and other cities and towns weren't anything at all to him. The confines of his childhood were claustrophobic and spoiled everything. But still— how beautiful his native state was. How he had missed it, and how he would miss it.

Eventually Alfred managed to get onto his flight, a half-miracle. New York wasn't so heavy; New York was a place he could breathe in. New York was becoming home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: So I've decided that I'm going to share a fun fact or two about this story at the end of each chapter because I don't want to forget.
> 
> Here's the first one: Alfred is only from Illinois because of the piece bashing ORD in Chapter Two. Originally he was from Massachusetts, and Chapter Seven was called 'Fireworks en Masse'.
> 
> Double fun fact: references to the sexual assault in this story were rushed into the first few chapters, as I made a last-minute decision for this scene to replace a different scene that was a bit more personal. As a result I may have fucked up with portraying this particular issue, and if I did, please let me know.
> 
> A review would be wonderful. Have a safe, good day.


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